


Brother

by landrews



Series: Brother 'verse [1]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:51:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landrews/pseuds/landrews
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's standing right there, but Danny can't reach him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Through 2.12 for actual spoilers- informed in intent/mood by all episodes through 2.18. 2.19 means there are time stamps in my future, lololol.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine- characters owned by Lenkov, CBS, et al- Just commandeering them for a short time and some transformative fiction-  
> Thank you: very, very much to my thoughtful beta, starlet2367, who read bits out of context for weeks and then read it all over again :-)  
> A/N: 1) coda for 2.10, missing scenes/coda 2.11- incorporates very minor amount of dialogue from 2.11, written by Melissa Glenn & Jessica Rieder- my intent is that this slidesinto canon pretty seamlessly. 2) Show drives me crazy for re-naming like real buildings for other real buildings and shit, so although I made an attempt, don't shoot me if you know the actual road names I should be using and I'm not, lolol 3) I only stuck to RL law enforcement/military info as closely as the show does :whistles: 4) If you carry, my opinions aren't necessarily my character's opinions- if you have no idea what I'm talking about, move along, nothing to see here :-)
> 
> BROTHER
> 
>  
> 
> _I hope you always know its true_  
>  _that I would never make it through_  
>  _'cause you could make the sun go down_  
>  _Just by walking away_  
>  _Playing like we used to play_  
>  _Like it would never go away_  
>  _I feel you beating in my chest_  
>  _I'd be dead without_  
>  _Sister_  
>  _I hear you laugh_  
>  _My heart fills fuller_  
>  _Keep me, please_  
>  _Sister_  
>  _When you cry_  
>  _I feel your tears running down my face_  
>  _~ Sister, Dave Matthews Band, Live at Radio City_

The hospital's a fiasco. The governor wants full disclosure. HPD is put on guard duty without being told anything. Since Steve's a specialized reservist and is going to miss his next training weekend due to injury, Joe organizes their modified story to protect SEAL Team Nine before he calls his superior to report his and Steve's role in Five-0's major, unsanctioned, non-jurisdictional brush with Wo Fat. At best he'll be discharged. At worst, they will both be arrested. The good news is that Wo Fat's been moved from near the top of the international watch list to detain on contact, which will make it harder for him to move around.

Steve's on enough pain meds that he's distracted and spacey when talking to the NCIS agents that come to interview him. They ask to speak to him alone and close the door, but Danny grabs a nurse to check in on him after two minutes and then leaves the door cracked open when he holds it for her as she leaves again. Steve's being smart, answering with as few words as possible, using yes and no a lot. Jenna's name comes up and Steve falls silent. After a long pause and a couple of murmured comments from the agents, Steve says, “No, I didn't visually confirm the death of Agent Hirsch, but I watched Wo Fat murder Jenna Kaye.”

“Why didn't he kill you?”

Danny doesn't think Steve is going to answer. He hopes Steve can keep the cover story straight in his scrambled brain. Joe decided they should keep the name Shelbourne to themselves for now. Danny knows Steve's already run it through a dozen different databases and every different directory he could locate without successfully linking the results to anything or anyone that is anywhere in the same galaxy as Wo Fat or John McGarrett. 

But Steve trusts Joe and Danny trusts Steve, so they will all keep their mouths shut. 

“I don't know.”

“He tortured you. Do you have information he wants?”

“He was fishing. He murdered my parents. He murdered Governor Jamison and framed it on me. I don't know. I don't why he didn't kill me. I don't know.”

Steve is beat up, with electrical burns and extensive bruising inside and out, but he hasn't required machine monitoring, and they gave up trying to keep a fingertip pulse oximeter on him hours ago, so there's nothing keeping track of his pulse. If there was, from the way his voice drops and his volume lowers, Danny knows the thing would be squealing by now. He slaps the door open with the flat of his hand and storms into the room. The agents heads snap around, the tall one's hand straying under the edge of his blazer. Hanson, Danny thinks.

Danny stops and holds his gaze. “You done, Steve?”

“Yeah, Danno,” Steve agrees. 

“We're not, Detective Williams,” Hanson growls.

Danny glances over at Steve, who has dropped his head back on his stacked pillows and closed his eyes. “He's done, Hanson.”

“Hammond,” Hanson corrects.

Danny waves his hand at him. “Out. You need him again, he'll be at Five-0 headquarters when the doc gives him clearance.”

“We're not done, McGarrett,” Hanson says, but his feet are moving. 

“Lieutenant Commander McGarrett,” Danny corrects. 

He crosses his arms and steps out of their way while Steve ignores them all.

***

Steve has officially checked out as far as Danny's concerned. Checked out the day the NCIS agents interviewed him and has slept walked through the six days since. 

For the third day in a row, Danny dumps out Steve's untouched orange juice, toast, and one of the two eggs Danny made him. Steve took half his prescribed Percocet and a Dramamine. Danny scoops up the remaining tablet and seals it back in the bottle he slams down on the counter next to the bread. Steve is sitting out on the lanai, staring at the ocean like a selkie longing for his skin.

Every time he looks at Steve, all he can see is the smile Steve gave them on the 'copter after Chin announced his engagement. It's the last smile Danny's seen out of him, and Danny didn't realize before how much he likes Steve's easy smile. The one that says, “we're fucked and I like it”.

He rips a paper towel from the roll, dampens it and wipes the counters and the stove. When he's done everything he can in there, including starting a second pot of fresh coffee for Steve to drink throughout his day, Danny leaves the kitchen to lean against the wide, white frame of the open lanai door. “I'm outta here, babe. Gotta go to court today on the Tomlin case.”

Steve turns his head to indicate he's listening, but not enough to look at Danny. “Lyman prepare you?”

Lyman is a consulting lawyer with the State's Attorney Office and works only with Five-O personnel and HPD officers on high-profile HPD cases as determined by the Governor's Office. She's good. Sharp and concise. Not big on long-winded. She's taught Danny a lot about the usefulness of short words that mean a lot. His conviction rate in Jersey was impressive, but in Hawaii, he's riding every eight out of ten cases to prison for seven years or more. Part of it is the cases they get, part of it is the creative verbiage of the reports Five-0 files, and part of it is Lyman's prep. Danny doesn't mind giving credit where credit's due. “Yeah. I'm set. Got the flashcards and everything.”

Steve doesn't chuckle, just turns his face back to the ocean. 

Danny closes his eyes as it comes out of his mouth, but he can't stop himself. “You okay, Steve?”

“Yeah, Danno. I'm fine.”

Danny straightens, but can't make himself leave.

“Go, Danny. See you tonight, okay?”

The promise that Steve'll be there tonight is the only reason Danny can make himself turn on his heel, settle the screen door gentle on its hinges, and leave Steve behind. Steve wouldn't tell him he'd be there tonight he wasn't planning on it. The day Steve stops saying he'll see him after work is the day Danny empties the house of everything he might use to off himself. He's already changed the combination on Steve's gun safe and just the fact that Steve hasn't mentioned it makes Danny feel better about doing so. He still has his Sig in his nightstand, his Dad's Glock in the kitchen and the SOG knife, which he's been carrying since he got home.

He sleeps and runs with that knife, so it's not like Danny can just steal it and he won't notice. He's a SEAL. He's been trained to handle this crap, Danny reassures himself, he'll process. But he can't will away the sudden image of Jenna lying sprawled on dirty concrete, hand still manacled above her head. This wasn't the kind of mission Steve can just shut off. He's more than a SEAL, now. He's Five-0. And it was Wo Fat and it was personal and all of them know it's not over yet. He can't stuff this mission away in some dark place and label it under 'military orders'.

Danny's stomach knots when he closes and locks the front door. He knows it'll feel grumbly and unsettled until he comes home. Here. To Steve's. Tonight. Where his clothes and his razor and toothbrush are living for the time being. Where Steve will be sitting out on the lanai and Danny will bring him a beer, and Steve will listen to him talk about his day, but won't say ten words before Danny grills them steaks and sweet red pepper and mushrooms and won't say ten more before he climbs the stairs and leaves Danny to watch TV. In the dark, Steve will spill over, more words than he says all damn day, until Danny wakes him.

***

Steve shouts and then there's a thud that shakes the floorboards above the living room.

Danny lurches up from the couch where he'd been dozing through a marathon re-run of American Pickers. His headphones bounce from his chest onto his junk and he winces, knocking them onto the floor. He takes a moment to let his heartbeat slow and get his feet under himself. There's another muted bump from above and the sound of Steve's low rumble of denial drifts down to him. Danny runs his hands over his hair and takes a deep breath before he stands.

Pushing the bedroom door open wider with the tips of his fingers, Danny peers in cautiously, but tonight Steve's right there in view, sitting with his back against the bed, one leg bent, bare foot flat on the floor, and the other sprawled in front of him. His hands are fisted in the cotton of his sweats, pushing against his thighs. His head is tilted back, eyes closed, long neck pale above the dark tee he's wearing. Danny knows that shirt will be soaked when he finally helps Steve out of it.

Danny knows Steve hates this, hates Danny's help. He wonders if Steve spends his daytime hours dreading the coming night. He hates that Steve can't just accept that Danny really doesn't mind. He saw worse after the Towers fell. It's why Mattie came every night to sit with him after Rachel left him. They learned what true friendship looked like by watching Dad and his friends, by being there for their own friends and letting their friends be with them. It's a gift you can give, when you have nothing else, letting someone help you. Steve doesn't see it that way, but he does, grudgingly, with a certain amount of shame, let Danny help. 

He's left Steve over at Pearl twice, for investigative interviews. Steve saw a Navy therapist both times. He was better after, more relaxed. Slept better until he started getting tangled up in his own thoughts again. He's lived with Steve almost a month now and while neither of them slept well even before last week, Steve never mentioned nightmares.

“Hey!” Steve says clearly, and then his voice drops again, just a low murmur. “No, no, no, no, don't you do that, don't you, no, no, don't... don't...”

Danny's heard this one before, several times. It comes with a name, Turtle, but when he mentioned it at breakfast one morning, Steve pressed his lips into a straight line, and let his eyes go flat. He just sat there until Danny said his name, and then he stood up stiffly and retreated to his chair on the lanai.

“Don't you,” Steve mutters. “No.”

Danny crouches beside Steve without touching him. “Steve. Hey, Steve,” he says in a normal voice.

Steve stiffens.

“Nightmare, Steve. C'mon, man. You need some real sleep. Wake up already so you can get some. Dream about pretty girls. Kickass girls. Or maybe puff marshmallow stars and a Peppermint Patty moon. Wait, I think I ate them all. My turn to buy, though, so no worries. I'm thinking you need dreaming lessons. I bet Kamekona could hook you up. He dreams big, must've learned it somewhere.” 

Steve relaxes an eighth of an inch. The words just bubble out of Danny, and he's grateful lately that he has the gift of gab, but god, what comes out sometimes. Where even- 

“Yeah.” he encourages. “And you need dreamcatchers, should've thought about that days ago. Gracie'll loan you at least one of hers, maybe two. She's got gobs. Did you know that they make children's books that are really for adults? Ever heard of Neal Gaiman? Yeah. I never knew that, either, until I probably scarred Gracie for life. More than once. Why, yes, I can be kind of dense sometimes, now that you ask. Not as dense as you, though, not even a tenth.” 

Steve's hands fall open and he lets his bent leg straighten, wincing when he straightens out his knee. 

“You awake?”

Steve swallows hard and Danny can tell he's worrying the inside of his lower lip with his teeth by the minute shift in his jaw. 

“You gonna open your eyes, Steve?”

Steve makes the slightest negatory motion a person can make with his head. He's perfected it undercover. Danny rolls his eyes and stands, his own knee creaking a bit. He almost laughs at the quick mental flash he gets of he and Steve ten years from now, bent over at the waist above some DB. All the older guys complain about their backs- say their knees are fine now that they don't use them anymore- but Steve's eyes fly open, and their gazes lock. 

Danny's heart pumps funny at the fear in Steve's eyes, his face open and scared. 

“Whoa, babe,” he whispers, raising both his hands. “Not leaving.”

It's these odd moments that tear him up. That are tearing Steve's carefully constructed shields apart layer by layer as the moon arcs through the sky.

“You, my friend, need a dry shirt.”

Steve gives him a jerky nod and his gaze is a ten pound weight between Danny's shoulders as he crosses to the dresser to pull out a dry tee shirt. He'll have to live with the wet waistband on the sweats or strip to his briefs. Danny doesn't think he could sleep in sweats at gunpoint. He secretly thinks that Steve just wants to roll outta bed and straight into his morning conditioning without having to bother pulling on his pants in the morning. He should just sleep in cargos. 

Steve makes a noise, and Danny frowns as he dangles the shirt in front of him. “What?”

Although he's looking down and to the left, Steve's lip twitches up on one side and he shakes his head a little. 

“I was talking out loud, wasn't I?” He doesn't reach for the shirt, so Danny tosses it onto the bed and sticks his hand out. “Need help getting up?”

After a long minute, Steve nods again and takes Danny's hand. His skin's still heated, his palm slick. When he's on his feet, he sways. Danny catches his elbow. So far, he hasn't forced the issue of Steve avoiding him, but tonight he ducks his head and inserts himself in his line of sight. His thousand yard stare interrupted, Steve focuses for a millisecond before he simply closes his eyes again. Danny sighs and gives him a little shove back, bracing himself for Steve's weight in his hands until he's seated on the bed. 

Steve's okay, Danny knows this. He's still body sore, he's got stitches in three different places, and his feet are shredded, but he'll be back to work on Monday. Not in the field just yet, but back at his desk, back onto the cases they have open, on the phones and in Danny's face, if only for show until he gets into the swing of it again. But these nightmares kick him hard, and he's shaky and weak afterward. Danny doesn't like it. “You okay?” Sometimes Danny could just rip his own tongue out.

Steve doesn't answer.

“You're okay,” Danny says, using his firm Dad voice. “You're fine. Except maybe not your shoulders just yet. They might still be not so fine as the rest of you.” He lays a hand on Steve's left shoulder, happy he doesn't jump, and then on the right, and tugs at the wet shirt. Steve helps as best he can, teeth clenched. He can do about everything now, including strip his shirt himself, but it still hurts and since he hasn't protested Danny helping him at night, Danny still helps. “You're soaked, babe. Hang on.”

He grabs a hand towel from the mismatched stack in the bathroom closet. It's dog eared and worn and Danny prefers them to the plush, newer ones Steve keeps on the open shelves near the sink. Steve's dumped his sweats on the floor and his hands are almost steady when he accepts the towel and dries his face, then rubs it roughly over his head. 

“Watch it,” Danny croaks, reaching out, but can't stay Steve's hand in time before he hits the row of stitches in the scalp behind his ear. 

Steve hisses and folds in on himself, his face going two shades paler in the near dark, but he doesn't make a sound. Danny plucks the towel from his grasp.

“Holy fuck. You are insane, you hear me? Come here,” he orders, pressing Steve's head over so he can look at the stitches in a shaft of moonlight. He dabs at the dot of blood seeping through the end stitch. “You're good. It's fine. It's only a couple days until they get yanked out anyway.” 

Slowly straightening his head, Steve sits up a little as Danny dries the sweat along his hairline and the nape of his neck. His torso has nearly dried in the cool air. The small tremor of his hands has become the ripple of gooseflesh across his shoulders and he shivers under Danny's hands. “Shirt,” Danny says. “Pick your poison.”

“Water,” Steve mumbles.

He always does. 

Danny trudges downstairs. It's two, so he should be able to get another four hours if Steve stays down and quiet. Even if Steve doesn't sleep and stumbles downstairs and out onto the beach at five, Danny'll still get sleep. It's the nightmares that are exhausting them both. He fills a glass with ice and water and then snags a shot glass and the Jack he replaced Steve's terrible whiskey with last week. The man has no taste buds.

Although Steve says 'water', and won't take sleeping pills or half his Percocet or even Benadryl to knock him down a little, Danny's found he can hand him shots of whiskey and Steve will tilt them back until Danny stops.

Steve's crowded upright against the headboard when Danny comes back in, sheet pulled up around his waist and arms wrapped around his knees. He's already scooted to the middle, leaving room for Danny. The first few times he plopped down onto Steve's bed with Steve in it, Danny felt twelve and wondered where Steve kept his stash of comics and Mad magazines. Maybe a pilfered Playboy. He can't sit cross-legged anymore on a surface as soft as Steve's mattress, but being old enough to drink Jack Daniels more than makes up for that.

Straightening his legs, Steve takes the water and drinks half in one go. Danny wishes he had bought more Gatorade and slots it into his mental shopping list as he works the cap of the Jack off and pours the first shot. It's an art, filling the little glass without spilling it over. He looks up to see Steve watching his hands. Danny offers the shot, but Steve doesn't move, so Danny takes it. He takes the next, too, and Steve finally takes the third. And the fourth. Danny tilts the neck of the bottle towards him, waggling it.

“No,” Steve says. “I'm good.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Steve evens out the second week home. Being back at work keeps him distracted from himself during the day. He goes to see the Governor, who agrees to cover the team with full immunity. They all get called in to sign conditions of confidentiality. The governor himself uses his law degree to explain the consequences to each of them if they ever talk to anyone other than the current members of Five-0, himself, or a pre-approved mental health professional about Korea. HPD has been shut out at the top, and since Steve's team is gagged, by choice and law, all they know is that McGarrett was injured while investigating a Five-0 case.

He's in and out of NCIS and then preparations with his military advisor and JAG lawyer regarding his upcoming appearance before the Naval Board of Inquiry. He actually strings as many as thirty words together at a time and confides in Danny. He will first testify on behalf of his own commission and then Joe's.

His standing as the head of the Hawaiian Governor's Five-0 Task Force and the fact that Jenna Kaye was still listed as a Five-0 consultant on leave at the time of her request for help and subsequent death, along with his age, fitness, specialized training, and the fact that he was not on active duty at the time should keep him in the Reserves with only a black mark – an official letter of censure for non-notification of international travel in case of activation and illegal entry into a hostile country resulting in the death of one or more foreign nationals- and a reduction of his pay grade for a time.

They are both lucky in that all his team's actions can be kept between his team and the Navy. The investigation, confessions and transcripts of the Board will be sealed and classified. Steve's military advisor assures him that even the letter of censure will be classified. That a rogue group of American LEOS outside their jurisdiction and two Navy personnel injured or killed eight or more North Korean nationals on North Korean soil while attempting the rescue of two Americans from a Chinese National is not something the Sec Nav wants anyone else to know about, not even the President. Steve doubts the CIA will ever manage to rake enough BS from the files to discover NCIS knows the fate of Joshua Hirsch and Jenna Kaye, let alone their families.

They keep it contained, that's all that matters.

At home, Steve does his PT and conditioning in the morning and Danny runs with him at night. He thinks Steve's doing too much, but Steve can't sit still, like he filled his quota for the year the week before. They go through reams of moleskin and gel bandages for his feet. He only has four nightmares that wake Danny up on three different nights, but one of those is bad enough that Steve wants only coffee, not water or Jack, and Danny sits up with him the rest of the night.

That day, they land a narcotics case. Five-0 fires back up and four days later, Steve ends up in the field without clearance. Actually, he ends up in Mamala Bay. He only gets vocal after he's come back from X-ray. Danny's surprised at the relief that wicks through him as he listens to Steve push the doc. His elbow's fine, just bruised. Steve puts on a pretty face and lifts his arms without grimacing to put on the dry shirt Danny hands him, although the habit he's picked up of rolling his shoulders to release the strain he's feeling tells Danny he's not healed just yet. Despite his visible skepticism as he watches, the doc barters a week in a sling for his signature on the paperwork

At HQ, Steve, cargos almost dry, but boots still squelching, trots up the stairs, paperwork in his good hand, bypasses Chin and Lori in the bullpen without a word, rips open the cabinet in his office, and files the clearance with a flourish. Stopping to lean on the computer table next to Chin, Danny sighs and exchanges head shakes with him.

“Kono's making a fresh pot, brah,” Chin offers.

“Bless her,” Danny says in heartfelt gratitude. “You notice which elbow he banged up?”

“The one that gets him out of typing his own reports?” Lori mutters.

“Good thing he has you, Rookie,” Kono sasses as she joins them.

“Good thing,” Lori says, letting the words hang, still focused on the file she has open on the table.

Danny shifts to look over her shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

“I think I remember seeing the name of one of Alvarez's shops somewhere else when we were scanning through the open HPD drug files two days ago.” She swipes a file she has open to her left onto one of the overhead monitors. “That's the list of businesses he owns.” She looks back down at the table and the many HPD tabs she has piled one atop another. “I could swear...”

Except for the place where they first accosted Alvarez, Danny doesn't recognize any of the names from other cases. He'd been off with Steve, collecting statements and conducting interviews most of the past week.

“The Sunbow Shirt Company?” Kono pipes up.

“Yeah.”

“It was-” Kono steps in next to Lori, who swipes the table with her thumb and forefinger to spread the files she's called up. Danny watches their slender hands work in concert and despairs of ever making his thick fingers skilled enough to really use the table. “Ah-ha. Right here,” Kono says and sends the right file to the center overhead monitor with a wide sweep of her arm. It's a business profile, collected as background for a drug bust, apparently.

Lori sends up a picture of a squat, flat-nosed man with black beetle brows and very little hair. “Tito Milagro. Part-time courier. Goes into Sunbow every Tuesday and Friday morning to deliver shirt orders all over the island. He was busted with three pounds of pure coke on a tail light violation sixteen days ago.”

“Today's Saturday, so that was a Thursday?” Danny asks no one in particular. “Would he still have the coke on him on a Thursday if he picked it up at Sunbow on a Tuesday?”

“That's thin,” Chin says.

Danny grunts in agreement.

“Where else does he work?” Steve says from six inches behind Danny's head.

Danny startles and swats at him all in one smooth move. “Stop that!”

Steve just smiles at him. Danny rolls his eyes.

“Rapid Printing,” Lori answers, flicking a text document up for them to see. Notes from an interview with Milagro after his arrest. “And The Sweet Spot.”

“What's that?”

“A sporting goods collectible shop.”

Danny nods. “They do autographs. Athlete-signed jerseys and baseballs and shit. That's a big cash business in Jersey. Lots of fraud.”

“We'll start checking on Monday. See if it links up with Alvarez.” Steve's voice is soft, but firm. Danny's suddenly aware of how glad he is that Steve's back here with them. He doesn't mind being in charge, but Steve's good at this. They are all tired from the long week. They've closed a case. It feels right to follow his lead. Except when he's being an insane asshole, of course. “Let's just finish up what we need to do tonight and get out of here.”

By the time all the immediate paperwork's filed to hold Alvarez and his fellows at HPD long enough for them to file everything else that's required over the next few days, it's pushing midnight.

When Steve tries to sticky finger Danny's keys while they're walking through a dark spot in the parking lot, Danny slaps his hand down and laughs. “I'm glad you're feeling better, babe, but really?”

Steve gives him a lop-sided grin and goes around to the passenger side, already pulling at the sling strap cutting into his neck.

“Two days, at least wear it for two days, until the swelling goes down, okay?”

Looking sheepish, Steve subsides and falls into his seat, reaching across his body to snag the door and slam it shut. “Let's barbecue tomorrow, Danno. Invite the team.”

It's the first time Steve's wanted them all over since they were reinstated back in June. And it's a Sunday. But they did work straight through Thanksgiving. He had stolen two hours to see Grace in the morning, taking her for pancakes, and the cousins had ducked out in the late afternoon for turkey and stuffing at their big family gathering. They had brought back a fat loaf of sliced sweet bread and thick cuts of the juiciest turkey Danny had ever had, with some insane explanation about wrapping it in leaves and cooking it underground. It had even tempted Steve's appetite, and if Steve will not only cook tomorrow, but eat as well, Danny's all for it.

“Steaks?”

Steve shakes his head. “Ono. But I'll throw a potato on for you.”

“Fish it is. Can you text with that wing?”

Steve rolls his eyes and starts tapping out the invite. Danny can't stop the grin that spreads across his face as he turns his attention to getting them home whole.

***

The barbecue goes well, despite the fact that Steve's changed his mind, his magnanimous mood of the night before having vanished when his foray into the bay yesterday caught up with him in the form of sore muscles and an aching arm. Joe comes early, a propane tank in hand to replace the empty one on the grill, and teases Steve about the sling and his obvious crankiness while they clean sand and palm fronds off the lanai and mow the little bit of grass Steve valiantly tries to maintain. Danny shouldn't be surprised when Max and Lori show up shortly after Chin and Kono, but he is, and he doesn't know if he covers it well. What throws him more is Lori's apparent familiarity with Steve's home.

He's glad to find himself alone in the kitchen with Chin when it's getting late. Max and Lori have adios'ed, Steve's upstairs, hopefully taking something to take the edge off his soreness that the beer didn't seem to touch, and Kono's sitting with Joe down by the surf. God only knows what trouble they could brew up if set loose together.

“So,” Danny ventures, handing another bowl to Chin for drying. “Lori seemed comfortable. I know I've been... distracted... the last few months.” An understatement, Danny knows. He's been so wrapped up in himself that until he moved in with Steve, he hadn't realized how reclusive Steve had been outside of work since June. He and Joe had been busy at first, catching up, and after a few half-hearted attempts, Danny had just let everything slide- focused himself solely on work and Grace. “I didn't know she'd been here before.”

Chin gives him a sideways glance, his hands moving surely over the bowl. “Brah,” he finally says.

Danny nods. Okay, yeah. He knows. Lori didn't come running to give Steve a hug in Korea based on nothing between them. She'd held up them all up in a dangerous location, and she's too smart for that. Smart and impulsive. Just like Steve. Danny closes his eyes and heaves a big sigh.

“It was a mistake,” Steve says from behind them and they both jump. Well, Danny jumps and drops the soapy glass he's holding; Chin just twitches.

“I hate him so much,” Danny mutters at Chin, and then flicks the faucet up and rinses his hands. Chin opens the cabinet to his right and nestles the bowl with its brethren before closing it and they end up turning around at the same time.

Steve's leaning against the door frame, cradling his elbow through the sling with his good arm. “Lori was a mistake,” he repeats, looking directly at Danny.

Danny shrugs. “You want to get involved with co-workers, Steve, that's up to you. Me, no way. There in lies real trouble, especially when everybody's got a gun. And you, you keep hand grenades in your pockets and four spare mags in your vest and you can kill with a rubber band. Lori wants to mess with that, she can go right ahead. Not me, babe.”

Chin chuckles, but Steve just frowns.

“Not literally, of course, me with you,” Danny huffs. “But do you see me messing with Kono and her surfer thighs and her sniper rifle?”

Danny's aware that Chin's straightened and has now added his glare to Steve's, but he can't seem to tear himself away from Steve's stormy gaze and the darkness gathering on his features and in the line of his shoulders even though he hasn't shifted from his faux-relaxed lean.

“The governor,” Steve bites off. He visibly takes a deep breath before he starts again. “I thought her position was temporary.”

“Oh, that's right. She's the Governor's liaison to Five-0. The liaison who's supposed to report back to him regarding our actions and keep us on the straight and narrow. And after all this time, and having to get her back in the field, where she was never supposed to be, and, I guess, getting bent with you, you'd think she'd go to bat for us, but do you know who went to tell him about you, Steve? You and your disappearance on behalf of a Five-0 team member and a missing CIA agent in North fucking Korea? To beg for help? Me, Steve. I went. When was the last time she reported to the Governor without you next to her? What does she really do for us, Steve? What skills does she have that we don't already? She's not...” Danny stops, the next words bitter on his tongue.

“She's not Jenna,” Steve says for him.

“We don't know anything about her, Steve. Nothing personal.”

“Jenna traded me to Wo Fat, Danny. She lied to my face.”

Chin clears his throat. “But we know why she did that, brah. We knew her.”

Steve stares at the floor just in front of Danny's bare feet. He nods after a moment.

Kono throws the kitchen door open and stops, her bright smile fading. Joe crowds close behind her.

“We interrupting something?” Joe says over her shoulder.

“No,” Steve says. “I'm just tired.”

Stepping on in, Kono crosses to Chin, who takes the three empty beer bottles in her hands from her, while Joe says, “That's what you get for letting drug runners blow up their boat on top of you.”

“Actually,” Chin corrects, turning to set the bottles on the counter behind him. “Steve blew the boat up from underneath.”

“Ah.” Joe grins as he sidles past Steve and pats him on his shoulder. “Good job, son. Get some rest.”

“Thanks, Joe,” Steve answers, his voice quiet.

Joe stops and really looks at him. Then he pats him again and says, “Thanks for the ono. Goodnight, Steve.”

“We're going, too, Steve,” Chin says. He catches Kono by her shoulders when she spins and shoots a confused look in his direction. “Come on, cuz.”

To her credit, Kono knows when to keep quiet. Her face smooths out. “Night, Danny." She tilts her head back towards Steve. "Take care of him, okay?”

Right. Because somewhere along the way he became McGarrett's keeper. Danny sticks his hands in his pockets and leans back against the sink. “Night, Kono.”

They cross the kitchen to the doorway, where Steve's still staring at the floorboards and avoiding eye contact. “Night, brah,” Chin offers.

Danny thinks Steve's not going to say anything, but then he does. “I'm sorry, Chin.”

“Everybody makes mistakes, Steve.”

Steve looks up at him with that damned kicked-in-the-gut face Danny can't stand. Chin smiles back at him, steady and low-key. Kono stands up on her tiptoes and kisses Steve's cheek and then shoves Chin into the living room. The front door slams a second later and Danny can hear Kono explode on Chin before the roar of his bike cuts off the sound of her voice.

“I need a drink,” Danny sighs.

“Danny...”

“I get it, okay? Heat of the moment. None of my business anyway.” Danny busies himself with turning the water back on. He pulls the plug in the drain and rinses the glasses remaining in the sink before stacking them in the rack.

“You can use the washer, Danny.”

“That's more than three minutes of hot water, Steven.” He wishes he could take it back as soon as the words hit the air.

“I'm sorry,” they say at the same time.

Danny doesn't turn around, though, just reaches for the whiskey and grabs a shot glass. “Want one?”

“No. I really am tired. I'm going up.”

Danny nods and pours his shot and listens to Steve's footsteps move around above him until they stop. “G'night, Steve,” he prays.

***

Steve does have a good night, or at least a quiet one, but he's in a sour mood which only worsens when Danny insists he wear his sling after he comes downstairs without it. No matter that by two that afternoon, Danny watches him pass by his office cradling the arm again, although he's only left the office for lunch, no word of thanks are coming Danny's way.

Kono and Chin nail Milagro's connection to Alvarez on Tuesday and on Wednesday, Danny and Lori clean house on a search and seizure at The Sweet Spot, while HPD rips apart Sunbow and Rapid Printing. Steve gets to blow off steam and all his excess energy in the interrogation rooms, with Chin and Danny backing him up on all but one.

For that one, Steve and Danny stand in observation and let Kono do the talking. Danny's not sure she wasn't genetically engineered for threat, like Jessica Alba in that apocalypse show his sisters used to watch. He's afraid Steve might hurt his face grinning the way he is, all sharp and shark-toothed.

“You aren't allowed to recommend her to Annapolis, Steven.”

Steve shakes his head without looking away from the suspect cowering from Kono, who hasn't laid a hand on him. “She's Hawaii's treasure. She's not going anywhere.”

Danny doesn't know what to do with that statement, wants badly to twist it and feed it back to Steve, so Steve'll know... he can't even complete his thought, though. Doesn't know what he wants Steve to know. He just lets it lie.

While Steve's at Pearl on Friday, Kono links another business into the drug chain, using a statement from during the week to net a small harvesting company on the Big Island, and then a local landscaping firm, and off they go again.

***

Steve lets everybody go at ten and drives them home. Danny grabs a beer and waits in the kitchen while Steve showers and then hands him a cold, opened bottle and heads up to do the same. When he stumbles back downstairs, a Yankees-Rays game is on, a repeat, with the sound turned down low. Steve is asleep on one end the couch with his head back, legs sprawled in front of him, breathing deep and slow, the half gone bottle of beer tucked against his hip.

A surge of affection catches Danny by surprise. He closes his eyes against it and then sighs and drops down on the other side. The score's 5-2 in the bottom of the fourth. He can't tell what year the game's from, maybe 2009. It's in the old stadium. He steals Steve's beer.

***

Danny's pillow lurches up with a shout. He rolls off the couch into a crouch. It takes him ten seconds to really wake up and decipher Steve's hoarse exclamations as he finishes twisting over and burrows into the corner of the couch, covering his head with his arms.

“Steve,” Danny tries, but it only just scrapes out. He clears his throat.

“Danny,” Steve pleads. “No, no, no, no...”

“Steve,” he says loudly. “Steve.”

Steve snarls and tries to avoid Danny's hands without either moving or waking up.

The TV flickers bright and then drops them back into darkness before flaring again, bright as napalm. Danny snarls himself and barks, “Steven!”

Steve spooks, springs up, gaining his feet, swinging his arms wide, and catches Danny across the jaw, slinging him into the coffee table. His right eye explodes.

“Son of a bitch,” Danny shouts, falling over on his ass.

The roar of a crowd breaks over him. The announcer shouts- something about Cano and the ball and then Steve's hovering over him. “Sorry, Danny, I'm sorry. You okay?” His hands latch onto Danny's biceps, hot and hard, pulling him up. “Let me see.”

Danny lifts his hands, carefully taking the pressure off his eye. Of course, the light of the TV goes dim just then. Steve raises his hand and swipes his thumb over the corner of his brow. “You're bleeding.”

“You're shaking,” Danny shoots back.

Steve narrows his eyes, his lips going thin.

“Just... whatever. Get me something. Meet you in the kitchen.”

Steve works his jaw like he might say something, but drops his hold on Danny instead and turns away on his heel. Danny pretends not to see him catch himself from tripping as he tries to get around the couch to escape upstairs for the better first aid kit.

“Goofball,” Danny mutters and holds his face together with one hand while he pulls out a ziploc and maneuvers ice into it with the other. “Hey,” he yells. “Don't waste a chem pack on me! I got ice!”

Something unintelligible drifts back down to him.

He folds a paper towel and pats it down on top of his brow before placing the ice pack on it. He manages to sit for two full minutes before he can't take it anymore and pads upstairs after Steve. He finds him sitting on the closed toilet seat, a small tupperware box in one hand and a sealed gauze square and butterfly bandaid in the other. He doesn't look up. His hands are still shaking.

Danny leans in the doorway. “Steve. You okay?”

“Yeah. Just give me a minute.”

“Okay.”

“Danny. Please?”

“Take all the time you need, Steve. I'll just stand here and bleed, okay?”

That gets Steve's attention. Sitting up, the paper on the gauze square crinkles as he tries to fist his hands and his head turns sharply, his eyes landing on Danny's like a blow. But he drops his gaze again instantly.

Danny sighs. “Steve, I'm fine. But I'm not leaving you here.”

Silence settles over them. It's fascinating to watch Steve put the top back on. He's breathing slow, holding his breath for a little too long and then easing it out again. He loosens his grip incrementally. His shoulders drop in quarter inches. When Danny thinks he might not get hit if he moves closer, he creeps a foot into the room. Steve tilts his face towards him without looking up.

Danny takes another step. Steve tenses. Fuck this, Danny thinks and strides forward until he standing right in front of Steve, who takes a deep breath and blows it out, but doesn't shift. Okay. Danny considers for a second and then lowers the icepack. Steve takes it in the hand holding the gauze and lets it drop near his foot.

Moving slow, Danny lowers himself, reaching out with one hand which he slowly braces on Steve's knee. Heat radiates through Danny's palm. Steve's hot to the touch from struggling with himself; sweat is dampening his hairline. A faint noise escapes his throat and he widens his knees to make room. Danny sinks to his knees.

They're too close together. Steve's breath brushes soft and clean on Danny's temple. He smells of salt and sunscreen and grass and Steve. “Danny.” The low rumble of his name sinks into Danny's belly, tugging at his cock and filling his balls.

God, what the fuck. “C'mon, Steve. Just.” He takes his own shallow breath. Okay. Yeah. He's a little aroused, but just a little. Not like he didn't know he could let Steve turn his crank if he wanted. But he isn't twenty and loose on the streets of Newark anymore. He's a dad and Steve's commissioned and they aren't going there. “Just fix me up, okay?”

Steve bites his lip and then nods. And nods again.

“Steve,” Danny says, adding a little more bite than he intended. “I'm bleeding here.”

“Okay,” Steve growls back. “I got it.” He heaves in another deep breath and blows it out like he's rising from the sea and sets his little tupperware of Betadine wipes down. His hands are steadier as he sorts the gauze and butterfly band aid, setting the latter on his other knee. He rips the gauze open. He has to look up then and Danny's not sure he isn't just going to stand up and stalk off.

His eyes are hooded and he manages to avoid Danny even when he finally musters the courage to brush Danny's fingers away as he plucks the bloody paper towel from the cut on Danny's brow. He swipes at it with the gauze and then applies pressure, ignoring the wince Danny can't stop when he does, and stares somewhere over Danny's shoulder.

He's probably counting seconds in his head. Danny is definitely not roaming the line of Steve's lips while he waits. After a few seconds, Steve lifts the gauze, folds it and presses again. He tilts to the side and reclaims his tupperware, fishing out a soaked cotton before he releases the pressure and wipes the cut. It stings, but his touch is deft and sure. Danny knows he's actually had quite a bit of medical training and this is a big nothing, but if he can make Steve's hands stop shaking by giving him something to do, he'll be happy.

After drying the damn thing with the second gauze square, Steve stretches over and drops all the used gauze in the sink. When he brings the butterfly closure up, Danny snags his eyes. The pain there is deep and makes Danny's breath hitch. He shifts his gaze to the cut and Danny closes his eyes. The skin over his brow pinches as Steve carefully pulls the edges together. “Wait,” he murmurs, when Danny would have leaned away. “It needs two.”

He's smoothing the second one flat when Danny opens his eyes. Steve holds his look this time. His fingers slide off Danny's brow and over his cheek. “It's going to bruise,” he whispers.

“As long as it doesn't kill me, that's okay,” Danny says back and even he doesn't know what the fuck he means, but Steve blinks, his long lashes throwing shadows on the tired lines curving under his eyes, and draws his fingers back. His brows creases just slightly as one corner of his mouth lifts in the smallest smile possible.

“Oh, you're definitely going to be the death of me,” he says, and just like that, they're both standing and Danny's fingering his bandaids while Steve slides the top back on the tupperware.

“Me?” Danny bitches back as Steve crowds him out of the way to clean up. “I'm going to be the death of you? You're the super-charged, ninja-SEAL with the hopelessly simple plan of shoot everybody first and ask fifteen different databases for the answers later, but I'm going to be the death of you. You, my friend, are a walking notice of destruction as my pretty face can very well attest to right this second.”

“Want a beer?”

“Yes.” Danny says, following Steve out of the bathroom. “Yes, I do, because I was sleeping just fine until you woke me up with the flailing and the scr... do you know how much space you take up? I swear you grow three times when you sleep. Like all your crazy SEAL energy that you compress all day long finally gets to expand and take up actual space...”


	3. Chapter 3

They work through the weekend. Chin and Kono trade off with each other, one chasing leads on the computers and compiling the electronic and human surveillance info streaming in, and the other keeping Lori company on her stake-out at the Shalimar. There's seven teams involved in the investigation now, and more hands on stand-by. 

Steve sweats through keeping all the agencies that have a piece of this case coordinated and held in check until his say so. Danny's been impressed so far with his unexpected diplomacy. He forgets that Steve worked Intelligence and that most of his resistance to protocol and paperwork is bluster. He knows Steve couldn't care less about the collars. The man would work for no credit at all, but successful solve rates and high percentages on jailed assholes give a certain amount of power in the brokering of deals between agencies and not a little control, so Steve manipulates the system like a mafia overlord. 

This case is making Danny think too much about Matty, wonder too much where he is and if he's still in the wind or has been buried in the system, which agency has first dibs on him right now when he gets caught. Even as Steve had pulled strings to keep Matty's feds off Danny's back, Matty had been posted on the FBI's Most Wanted list. When he gets to feeling all guilty over dropping the ball with Matt, Danny tries to remind himself to just be grateful that Steve had his back, let him make his own choice when it came to his brother.

He'll never tell Steve, but Danny's damn proud Steve calls him partner. Five-0 is like nothing he ever imagined he'd be a part of when solving homicides in Newark. It wasn't even a dream. 

On Tuesday, Steve and he are supposed to be on duty together, at a condo across from a community park in Kaimuki, which is off the H1. It's taken Danny forever to get the hang of the Hawaiian names, and the long, curving roads that seem to follow the shoreline even deep to the interior, like zen sand art, and change names along the way. So, even now, over eighteen months in, with the highways and major roads committed to memory, he's still never quite sure he's where he thinks he is on the map in his head. Thank God for GPS.

He downshifts, appreciating the throaty vibration of the Camaro's big block as it responds. He likes to drive. Steering through the turn at the bottom of the tight off ramp, he hits the gas again and lets the car rocket onto the four-lane spreading out before him, the tires catching and propelling him straight ahead at his slight touch on the wheel. He hits the 50 mile speed limit and holds it there. Although the highway was humming, the traffic's light on the boulevard.

Steve left the house at four, by himself, three hours after they'd commiserated over his nightmares and changed his shirt and drank water with gatorade and no alcohol. From the couch, the TV spilling white noise into his headphones, Danny had watched him ease down the stairs and slip out the door and assumed he was headed out to run, until the door latched behind him and Danny's brain caught up to cargos and boots and the holster snug at his hip. 

By the time he hit the front steps, Steve's truck was turning out of the drive. Danny stewed until five-thirty and then took an illegally long shower, scarfed a bagel with cream cheese, and poked the address of the stakeout into his phone to memorize the smaller streets along his route. 

It looks quiet. There's a jogger out and two women walking dogs. Danny cruises an adjacent street to the condo and then hides the Camaro in plain sight in a parallel spot near the elementary school. He grabs the black backpack Steve left him and hikes through the teacher parking lot. Under the dark overhang of the gym, he pauses for a look around. 

In the next half-hour, the school will go from deserted to swarming with students and staff. The thought of drug dealers hanging their home-sweet-home plaque virtually next door makes Danny want to shred somebody. He slides around the side and walks briskly to the rear entrance of the condo. 

Steve buzzes him in. 

The unit's door is wedged open when Danny gets to it and he goes in and closes and locks it before seeking Steve out. It's devoid of all furniture, just cream walls, and nubby, stained beige carpeting. Steve's set up with a couple of folding chairs and a desk at the bedroom window that looks over the northeast corner of the park and the little concrete wading pond of water there. Benches are set up in a round and there's a three step amphitheater with a flat, ten foot platform of a stage. It's a good meeting place, filled with locals in the early afternoons. Right now it's barely visible in the early morning darkness and entirely deserted. 

Also in view is the small, yellow frame house on the corner beyond. Even at the park's busiest hour, the driveway, front door and side gate are all visible, along with the narrow two lane streets in front and to the west.

“Hey. We weren't due before eight, were we?”

Looking out the window, Steve shakes his head. 

“You let the HPD boys go early?”

“Yes, Danny, they're not here, are they?” 

Danny holds his hands up, palms out. “Don't shoot. Just trying to figure out why the hell they let a sleep-deprived, under-nourished Army brat like you sneak in before dawn and kick them out. Oh, I know, you flashed your badge and Five-0'ed your way in and they went running off like boy scouts sighting a kapu boar and left your ass here by yourself without back-up.” 

Steve pulls up Aneurysm Face, but just continues to watch the street below. Danny can hear his volume increasing every few words, but he's been pissed for hours. Might as well let it rise. “Or wait, maybe you actually informed them they should go ahead and believe everything they hear around the water cooler, because it's all true, you really are Superman, and you can not only watch whatever might be going down across the street there, but all three approaches and protect the innocents in the park, besides!”

“Danny.” Steve's tone is sharp in warning.

“What, Steve,” Danny grinds out. “Want me to leave, too? I'm sure Lori could use me at the Shalimar.” He glances at his watch. “Or I could crash in on Chin at HQ.”

“I can't sleep, Danny,” Steve says, rounding on him, fists clenched at his sides. “I can't think like this. I can't swim, don't want to run, can't drink myself into a stupor. Joe's AWOL since last night, doing God knows what. What else am I supposed to do? I need to work.”

Since he didn't expect an actual answer, Danny relents. “Don't dismiss HPD without back-up, babe. It's not safe.”

Steve folds his arms across his chest and glares at him. 

Danny knows just what he's packing and what he's capable of bare-handed. He shrugs. “I know, Steven, that you really are a one man platoon, but this is a drug cartel we're up against here.”

Turning back to their target, Steve says, “It's just surveillance.” 

The window bursts, at the same time a loud crack pops Danny's ear drums. Glass shatters all around Steve like a halo. Steve's mid-air and then Danny's falling backwards, in a soundless vacuum, until he's buried under 200 pounds of Steve and it all comes rushing in on him, the guttural cry dying in Steve's throat, the wailing of car alarms, his own ragged breath. 

“Shit,” he says, but it sounds distorted, lost in his ribcage somewhere and his body's yelling at him. He shoves Steve off, rolling with him. Steve grunts as he bonelessly lands on his back, blinking hard, tears welling up and spilling over. He grimaces, squinting hard, eyes nearly closed.

“Steve,” Danny breathes. There's a fine shimmer of glass dusting his cheeks and brows.

“Glass,” Steve tells him, voice hoarse. “Glass.”

In his eyes, oh, shit. Danny pushes off him, only dimly aware of the prickle of glass slivers beneath his palms. Another bullet whines past his ear, the crack of the rifle following. It ricochets off something on the wall as Danny ducks and covers. He scrambles forward again, as a third bullet buries itself in the drywall near the door. Obviously the sniper doesn't have the angle to hit them on the floor, which gives Danny more confidence. He crawls through the door and then risks a crouch and runs to the front door to grab the pack he dropped when he came in. 

Bolting back, he drops to his belly at the bedroom and slither-slide-wriggles to Steve's side. He's rigid, panting, arms up to cover his eyes, his hands grasping his own wrists. Danny fumbles for the zipper and digs out a water bottle. Twisting the cap off viciously, he flings it away, reaching for Steve in the same motion. His hand slides under Steve's neck, lifting, and Steve leans up and forward, lowering his arms as Danny upends the bottle, splashing it over the bridge of his nose so it spills over into both eyes, carrying the minute pieces of glass down and away. Steve's pants have volume; tiny, desperate sounds. 

He shakes his head when the bottle's emptied, shedding water like a dog and blinks slowly. Danny can't believe how much control he has- he's blinking furiously just in sympathy. 

“Again,” Steve barks through clenched teeth. 

Danny finds another bottle and rips it open.

“Slower,” Steve orders. “Is it off my skin?” His right hand hovers up near his left eye and Danny grabs it, holds it down so he can lower the bottle closer and do a better job. 

“Okay.”

Steve opens his eyes wider as Danny rinses the left eye and then shifts to the right. Steve shudders and his reaction normalizes, his lids fluttering despite his efforts to control them.

“How bad?” Danny gasps. “How bad is it?”

“Not... burns. Left eye, left eye.”

Danny shifts again. He lets go of Steve's hand when Steve shakes him loose, lets him lean to the side and hold his lids apart while Danny flushes first one eye and then the other with the remaining water.

“Just gritty, like a bad sand storm,” he adds. “He gone?”

Through the broken window, a fresh breeze carries the scent of something spicy cooking. Danny can't see anything but a sparse tree limb and Hawaiian blue sky. The wailing of the car alarms almost drown out the approaching sirens. Someone's pounding on the door and there's more than one voice shouting in the hallway. “Yeah, must be. You hurt anywhere else?”

“Don't think so. You?”

Danny has to think a minute, take stock. “No, think I'm fine except the heart attack you just caused me.”

Steve blinks at him, water dripping off his chin onto his soaked shirt. “How is this my fault,” he asks, reaching out. Danny grabs his hand as he stands, counter balancing Steve's weight, and takes Steve up with him. 

“You jinxed us,” he argues. 

“I jinxed us,” he says, and then, “Where is this blood from?” He grabs Danny's wrist and turns his hand over to inspect his abraded palm. 

“The glass, off you,” Danny tells him.

Steve nods in agreement. And then the front door gives with a crash, and HPD's yelling, and Danny and Steve end up on their bellies in the glass again anyway, hands on their heads, before all the explanations and clean-up starts.

***

At midnight, they're in a beater down the street from the yellow house because they are insane idiots. Sitting behind the wheel, Danny's got his blond haole head covered by a dark ball cap, but Steve's just adopted a slouch and an attitude and thinks that'll keep him out of sight. Well, that and the fact that no criminal that's already tried and almost succeeded to take them down would expect them to show right back up again. 

There'd been a minor flurry of activity reported by the cop Danny stationed to keep an eye on the place while the block and the park were blanketed by all the flashing lights from responding emergency personnel. The school was locked down, kids hustled to safety by cops and fireman from the arriving buses that couldn't be diverted. And yet, on the edge of it all, cars had come and gone from the house. At least the cop had noted the plates and photographed and written down descriptions of the suspects. 

“Here,” Danny says, taking the tube of antibiotic ointment from the drink holder between the seats. “Do your eyes again.”

“That makes them blurry.”

Danny sighs. “Like ulcers will make them feel so much better.”

Steve swears under his breath, but layers the ointment onto the inside of his bottom lids and then tips his head back against the seat, eyes closed to let it melt and spread.

Danny turns his attention back to the house. An HPD detective is stationed on the cross street. Danny's tempted to text him and make sure he's still awake, but it's only been fifteen minutes since he last annoyed the crap out of him.

“Why don't you wear ties no more, Danno?” Steve says out of the blue.

Because you like me better without, Danny thinks. What he says is, “We're not us yet.” 

Steve frowns, but keeps his eyes closed. “Us?” 

“Five-0. We're not Five-0 again, yet.” There's a lingering ache deep inside when he lies down at night, when his thoughts drift to the summer, to the days when he'd thought 5-0 gone forever. And after, when Kono was missing and Lori came in and nothing was meshing. 

Steve chews the inside of his lip and doesn't say anything. There's dampness seeping from under his lids.

Danny's chest tightens when he thinks of that halo of glass surrounding Steve, the echo of the rifle report in his ears. “We're not... we don't... mesh like we used to.” 

Using one hand, Steve wipes the oozing ointment from the outside edges of his eyes with his middle finger and thumb. Danny bites his tongue to keep himself from nagging at him not to rub. Instead, he looks away before Steve opens his eyes and catches him watching. 

Steve's phone rings. Danny glances over to see him thumb the call on, blinking blearily at the bright light. “McGarrett.” 

He winds his fingers in a go-go movement. Danny cranks the engine over and eases away from the curb. 

“Stay here, we'll take it,” he says into the phone, and to Danny, “Stop sign. Mazda just pulled out from the rear.”

Rolling up to the stop sign, Danny executes a full stop. The Mazda is about fifteen feet from his own stop sign on the cross street. Danny has the through street, so he crosses his fingers and accelerates on through, straight ahead. The Mazda turns right and trundles along behind him. “Who's inside?”

“Horton couldn't tell. Let him pass you on Pauhoa, it goes two lane there before Fourteenth.”

It's turns out to be Curtis Maywood, their medium fish with a very long record of arrests and few convictions. Steve calls their fed back-up and another stand-by team from HPD to station them at two different roads Maywood is likely to take if Chin's hunch is correct concerning his destination. Danny lets him get a good lead on them. Fifteen minutes in, the feds get the ball, picking up the tail as Danny wheels into the nearest gas station and parks.

“You want water?” Danny asks, opening his door. “I'll get us waters. And Doritos. Will you eat peanuts or something? Almonds? A chocolate bar?”

Steve shakes his head. 

“I'm getting you trail mix and jerky, and you're gonna eat it,” he says, and slams the door. 

Steve's on the phone when Danny pushes back out of the bright light chaos of the surprisingly busy convenience store, holding the door for a frazzled woman and her two brats arguing for candy and Cokes, but holding water and chips. “Stand firm,” he mutters, and she shoots him a grateful smile that lifts his mood and makes him smile back in return. Crazy tourists, having their kids out past midnight.

“Thanks, Chin,” Steve says and disconnects as Danny clambers back into the shit heap HPD loaned them. 

Danny hands him water and sets two bags of trail mix and a jerky between them before ripping open his Doritos. “So, where are we?”

“HPD just took the tail from the feds.” Steve relays, his eyes tracking someone in the store. “That should get them to Acker's machine shop. Chin got search warrants for it and an arrest warrant on Maywood based on Sophie Meyers' statement. The feds want their own SWAT, but we get the lead on entry. Three AM. HPD will hold the perimeter and detain whoever leaves the net before then.”

“You leaving Horton on the house?”

“Yes. And DEA's sending two agents to take our Diaz stakeout at the Shalimar so Lori can get to Acker's. Kono's gearing up and should be in her nest by the time we get there.”

“HQ, it is, then.” Danny crumples his empty bag and tosses it in back. 

Steve shakes his head. 

“You gonna eat this?” Danny asks, snatching one of the skinny bags of trail mix, and tearing the top off. Tilting it up, he spills some into his mouth. It's good, and he hums in appreciation, before holding it out expectantly. Steve takes it automatically and Danny starts the car. He pulls out onto Kapahulu, winds around onto Waialae and hits the on ramp to the H1. “Open the jerky, bitch.” 

Steve gives him an inscrutable look, but sets the trail mix between his legs and opens the jerky. It's real jerky, long, hardened twists of beef. He fishes a piece out and hands it over. 

“No MSG, I checked.” The smoky-salt flavor bursts on Danny's tongue and fills his mouth with saliva. He swallows and shifts the piece to his cheek, chewing steadily. He can talk around it. “I don't get why there's so much money in drugs. Pot tastes like dusty tea leaves and coke numbs your tongue and crack... You ever been in a crack house, Steve?” He doesn't wait for an answer. “Not some base housing somewhere, that gets swilled out every so often just for appearances sake, but a real crack den, where they've been burrowed in for years. It reeks, Steven. I don't even want to describe it right now. I know you've been in malodorous places, you might think you know what I mean, but times that a couple-three times and then you'll be there.” And Danny knows it's bullshit. He doesn't even want to think about what Steve might have smelled a time or two. 

Without looking, he can feel Steve loosen up beside him. He settles deeper into his seat and there's the flash of his hands under the passing highway lights overhead as he absently pours trail mix into his palm and eats it one piece at a time. 

“The point is, drugs don't hold a candle to food. Take this jerky.” He pauses to finally tear the piece he's softened off with his teeth and then waves the remainder in Steve's direction. “You pair this with some Nova Scotia smoked salmon and a solid piece of Gouda and it'd be like hitting a gold mine in your mouth.”

“Gold mine in your mouth, Danny?”

“Yeah, an experience worth way more than a joint of the best Columbian.” He passes a slow blue mini-van and catches up to the Ford Galaxy trying to collect a speeding ticket in the left lane.

“What's an ounce of coke like?”

“Last year Stan flew in this amazing caviar for Thanksgiving.”

“You went to Thanksgiving at Rachel's last year?”

Danny's stomach flips, but he stamps down on it hard. “Yeah, but I, uh, wasn't welcome this year, for understandable reasons.”

Steve snorts.

“You know you have no tact, right? Anyway, getting back to my point, I always thought I hated caviar. Turns out I only hate cheap caviar.” He throws a grin at Steve, who smirks back at him and pops another raisin or peanut or something between his lips. God help me, Danny prays, as his belly warms. He clears his throat and looks back at the highway. “This caviar? Like Nirvana and the seventy-two virgins, and the glory of all the angels in Heaven exploding all at once in your mouth.” His brain unhelpfully decides to supply him with an image of something else exploding in his mouth and he swallows wrong and nearly chokes on the jerky still in his mouth. He swallows that and coughs. 

“That good, huh?” Steve chuckles. 

“Way better than an ounce of coke that numbs your mouth and fries your brain and makes you useless for all other physical pleasures,” Danny says and shuts up.

Steve turns his body towards Danny with a narrow-eyed considering look that has Danny checking his mirrors, and the gas gauge and looking anywhere but back at him. “Is that experience talking, Danny?”

“I read a lot. It was Beluga. The real deal. Limited import. I like salmon roe, too. It pops when you... um, press it with your tongue.” Danny swerves right, to go around the damn Ford, and hits the gas once he's back in the left lane. The engine whines at the extra pressure and Danny scales it back a bit. 

A long moment later, the jerky bag crinkles and Steve extracts a piece. Danny remembers the jerky he still has in his hand and puts it back in his mouth. In silence, they share the entire bag and then finish off the trail mix before they get to HQ.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The raid goes down quiet. Steve has the motley drug crew of nine at the frame house picked up simultaneously to keep any attempt at communication with the cartel dark until they get the info they need. Maywood gives up Diaz by five, and the down and dirty sunrise assault on Diaz nets them info on the next shipment. 

A DEA lackey brings them coffee at ten, but they've been up so long, even Danny's stomach rolls when he gulps the first hot, bitter mouthful and he sets it down half-finished. No one else touches theirs. At noon, Steve calls it and leaves the other agencies to their mountains of paperwork and the grid of surveillance and evidence tasks outlined on white boards in HPD's largest common room while 5-0 stands down for 18 hours. The drug shipment's scheduled arrival is the small hours of Friday morning. That gives them two days to plan their approach.

Danny drives, his own eyes gritty. Steve's are closed, thank the lord, because they look like Danny's feel. “Hey,” he says, bumping Steve's arm. “Ointment.”

“Anybody ever tell you you'd make an annoying wife, Danny?” Steve says, but his tone is mild and he sits up straighter and digs the ointment out of the zippered side thigh pocket of his cargos.

“Yeah, well, stop making me have to sound like one.” 

He winces in sympathy when Steve gasps out a low 'shit' when the ointment hits his eye and blinks hard. He does the other eye and leans his head back, his jaw clenched. “Left it too long,” he finally grates into the silence.

Danny grunts and hits the radio. 

***

The clink of glass wakes him. The light is low, slanting across the living room, and there's something sizzling in the kitchen. Bacon. Danny stretches, his vertebrae pop, pop, popping and muscles tightening almost painfully before they let go and he sinks back into the couch again. He should just buy a little TV for the guest room. He feels for the headphones that have slid off his head and digs them out from halfway under his pillow.

“Danny,” Steve bellows. “Get up.”

“No,” Danny yells back.

“Cream cheese bacon omelet,” Steve counters and damn, that's not fighting fair.

“I'm up,” Danny says, lurching up and getting his feet on the floor. 

Breakfast for dinner is one of his favorite meals. Steve's made himself a veggie omelet and snuck green pepper and tomatoes into Danny's cholesterol feast, but at least he's eating. And he made fresh coffee. It's still hot enough to scald Danny's tongue when he sits back from wolfing down the omelet and tries to sip it. 

It's only six, which means Danny got about five hours. He's refreshed, but his body's heavy in that way that means he can push only so much further before he needs real sleep, a solid eight, if not ten hours in a row. Steve, in boardies and a damp tee, his hair finger combed, still looks worn, dark circles staining the skin below his eyes- though his eyes look better, not so red and irritated.

“You got a plan, Steve?”

“Want to ride down to the Marina? Take a look see at what's there now?”

“Thought you gave recon to the DEA.”

Steve nods before he stands up and takes his plate to the sink. “I did. I just want to see for myself.”  
What he isn't saying is that he doesn't want to send the team in on some low level DEA agent's intel, even with photos and vid to study. Danny knows the value of letting early recon soak in your head for awhile. Let the hind brain sort out all the details so that when the planning gets made tomorrow, nothing gets overlooked. Most of the time, they don't get the luxury of advance planning with Five-0. They always seem to be playing catch-up and dealing in hours instead of days.

“Yeah, okay. How much sleep you get?”

Steve's jaw shifts. “Enough.”

Danny scrapes the last of the cream cheese off his plate onto his fork. “Okay,” he agrees. “I'm gonna shower before we go.”

***

The harbor is buzzing. Steve drives them past Aloha Tower and the crowded Marketplace. Locals and tourists alike are drifting through the shops and the restaurant patrons are spilling out into the walkways as the sun lovers shift to the night owls who are just showing up for dinner before dancing and drinks. 

He negotiates down a maze of the one way streets around Irwin, watching his mirrors, before he finds a parking spot off Ahui Street. Danny contains his surprise when Steve pulls a cooler from the Camaro's trunk. He takes the NAVY ball cap Steve hands him and frowns when he pulls it on, but bites his tongue. But when Steve reaches into his pocket and then swipes a card through the reader at the Ahui street gate into the Kewalo Basin piers, he bursts. 

“What is this, Steve?” he asks waving one hand at Steve and one at the boats beyond them. 

“Recon,” Steve says, ushering Danny through the gate with a hand on his lower back. 

Danny goes, but spins as he does, to keep talking. “I thought you meant, take a walk, see the layout, not show ourselves. DEA's pulling satellite. We're going to know what's here; we shouldn't actually be, y'know, physically walking the piers, looking at every commercial vessel, spooking everyone with our obvious cop-ness.”

“Slump your shoulders, D. Stroll.”

“What, now you're going to coach me through undercover work? Mr. I'm-Wearing-Jeans-Instead-Of-Cargos, no one will recognize me as the 5-0 task force head? That sniper didn't have a problem knowing who you were.”

“Danny. Who cares? We're down here almost every week, flashing our badges. Does it stop anyone from thinking they can get past us anyway?”

Okay. That's a good point. The crooks always think they're smarter. He sighs and stuffs his hands in his pockets and... strolls... alongside McGarret's long, easy stride. But they don't wander. Steve walks them straight down to Pier 16 and out to the twelfth slip. A big three-masted sailboat is moored there, its graceful lines standing out among the short choppy builds of the working boats surrounding her. 

“Bermuda Sloop,” Steve murmurs reverently. “Ocean-going.”

Danny doesn't actually know what that means, but it is a beautiful boat and he says so.

“It's a ship,” Steve huffs and steps aboard. 

Following by placing his feet exactly where Steve did so he doesn't go ass over teakettle, Danny rolls his eyes. “And whose ship is it?” he asks, enunciating 'ship' as sharply as possible. 

“Friend of Kamekona's.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

Steve scowls at him. He tips his chin at one of the deck chairs while he props his ass on a built-in storage box along the rail. “Want a beer?”

“Sure.”

They crack their beers and Danny scopes the view behind Steve while Steve studies the piers and vessels beyond his own shoulder. 

“Marina's only about seventy percent occupied.”

“Foreclosures are hitting the commercial fleet this year.” Steve shifts, scooting back so that his feet are swinging free. “Got company over there. Pleasure craft.”

Lights are just going on as Danny eases around to watch. In minutes, there's stringers of fairy lights lit up along the sides and across the yacht's wheel house and along the upper deck, where two couples have appeared. Inside, someone's hit the stereo and the low, mellow tone of something bluesy and soft drifts over the water to them. Danny turns back to Steve. “You wanted to know who we'd be endangering tomorrow night.” 

Steve grunts. 

“I requested a list of all slips holding permits for overnight stays.”

“I know,” Steve says, flicking his gaze over and away again. 

“We can issue a clearance order.”

“No,” Steve says, shaking his head. “We don't know who might pop up. They may have management here waiting on them. I want the big guys, Danny.”

“I hear you, Steven.” And he does. It's always better to rein in the suppliers, rather than settling for the dealers. If the shipment's as big as reported, there have to be enforcers and vice presidents right here waiting for it. They still don't know what family they're dealing with, just that the powder's coming in on a commercial Columbian fishing vessel to Honolulu Harbor. 

They settle in and sip beer and watch people come and go to about five different boats along the Basin. None of them stand out as suspicious. If the Columbians are smart, they have their non-locals at hotels or on boats slipped in front of the Aloha Towers among the cruise ships and power yachts. The Basin is overspill. 

It's nearing midnight. Security has flashed lights over them for the third time since they arrived, and the cool breeze is just raising goosebumps along Danny's arms when Steve says, “Let's go.” 

They dump their empties back in the cooler and head to the car, shoulders bumping. Danny's already dreading his five AM alarm.

***

“Hey,” Danny yells the next morning when he spots Steve at the tech table as he enters HQ. “You turned off my damn alarm!”

“You needed sleep, Danno,” Steve says mildly, still perusing the info under his hands.

“And you don't? What the hell is wrong with you? Oh, wait! That's right, you have specialized training. You can sleep walk and just keep shooting bulls eyes all day long even with your eyes closed.”

“Actually...”

“No. No, Steven, I do not believe you.”

Giving Danny his full attention, Steve straightens up and crosses his arms over his chest. “I can function to my full capabilities on five hours out of every twenty four for up to six weeks, Danny.”

“How do you even... I don't want to know how you know that, Steven, but I bet that's five uninterrupted hours, not two now and three sometime later...” Danny stops at the abrupt sound of a clearing throat and is suddenly aware that there are at least three people standing there that he doesn't know. 

“Are we done,” Steve says, voice flat.

A chill slides down Danny's back. He steps on the unwelcome worm of a half-formed thought. “Yeah. Did you at least eat?”

“There's sandwiches in the break room.”

That's not an answer, but Danny lets it go. “Need me here?”

“Help Kono mark up everywhere we need HPD officers posted outside the Basin tonight. Then you're with me when I go down to talk to Diaz again. He's lawyered up.”

“Got it.” Danny spins on his heel and goes to find Kono, who he can see isn't in her office. Of course. 

“You been married long?” someone with a pronounced Southern accent comments as he leaves. A choked off snicker comes from elsewhere. Danny assumes Steve's glare is working just fine even if his brain isn't. 

“I need three teams,” Steve starts before Danny's finally, blessedly, out of the room.

***

“He's crashed,” Chin says, easing the lanai door closed .

“Good.” Danny scoops a healthy portion of sweet and sour chicken onto his plate and dumps the last bit on Steve's. “Hand me that rice. I can't believe you got the brown.” 

“Here,” Kono says, shoving it closer. “It's better for you, brah.” She picks up the funky shrimp stuff with all the veggies in it that Danny won't touch even with gloves on and dumps a bunch next to Steve's chicken. “Give him some of that rice, too.”

Chin spears an eggroll and drops it on as well. “Let's eat.”

“He's sleeps out there more than he does upstairs,” Danny tells them, mouth full.

“The aunties always put us on the sleeping porch when we stayed over.”

Danny raises his brows at Kono. “Sleeping porch?”

“Wide screened porch,” Chin explains. “They catch the breeze. Surprised you haven't seen one since you're looking at rentals.”

“Eh. I stopped after the one down the street that Steve wouldn't let me take.”

Chin smiles. “Yeah. Only one task force member to a neighborhood, right?”

“That shithead, Nick Taylor,” Danny mutters.

They all pause a moment and then start chewing again.

“So, the aunties,” Kono continues. “They swore we slept better outside, with the ocean in our ears, the breeze on our cheeks...”

“And the mermaids singing our bad dreams away,” Chin quotes along with her. 

“That was Auntie Meimei's and everyone's used it ever since,” he adds.

“In that case, I think he should sleep out there every night.”

Chin takes another bite and wipes his mouth. “He's having nightmares?”

“Bad ones since he got back. PTSD kinda stuff.” Setting his fork down, Danny pushes his plate away a little bit and reaches for his water, but just holds the bottle in his hand, his stomach churning.

“He seeing anyone at the base?”

“Yeah.” Danny cuts his eyes towards the door and back at Kono.

She shakes her head, meaning Steve's not stirring, yet. Danny doubts he'd be able to hear them even if he's awake and playing opossum.

“I'm worried about him. I'm trusting he knows his limits, but...”

“He does, brah,” Chin reassures him. “I talked to Joe about him a little, after he dove from that plane for the SEAL.”

“That was crazy,” Kono injects.

“Well-educated crazy,” Chin says. “Steve knows his limits. Despite what we think we know of him and his mind over pain attitude towards field work, he won't put his team in danger because he's compromised. Joe swears the Navy beats that out of their officers in a hurry.”

“You don't get someone else killed by saying you're fine when you're not,” Danny clarifies. It's something every law enforcement class discusses during Ethics and Morals, but Danny knows a hell of a lot of cops who never embraced the concept. 

“It's vital to the trust within the team. Do you still trust him as a leader?”

Danny stares at down at his fingers, picking at the label on the bottle of water from the case Steve had loaded into the refrigerator two days ago. He thinks about the fresh mango and the new box of ammo that appeared yesterday on the counter, the way the sneaky bastard turned off his alarm as he snuck out past him this morning. “Yes, I do.”

“Good,” Chin says. “So do I.”

“So do I,” Kono echoes. “But you can wake him up later, because I'm not the one getting hit, brah.”

Danny laughs. He pulls his plate back after a minute and they ramble through his last visit with Grace and what they might do before Christmas and the next day's surf report as they finish eating.

A phone trills outside and after two rings, Danny hears the low rumble of Steve's voice. Getting up, he clears his and Chin's plates. Kono grabs hers and Steve's. Chin begins cleaning up the cartons of leftovers while Kono nukes Steve's cold meal and Danny starts washing up. 

Glancing through the kitchen window, Danny sees Steve is pacing across the lanai and back, listening to whatever he's hearing with a scary amount of concentration. As he finishes rinsing the silverware and hands it to Chin for drying, Steve comes inside. 

“Lori called. The teams are starting to deploy as scheduled. All comms are online, but she's getting static from Team Two's chase car and can't get it cleared. She needs you on it, Chin. Danny, the lab matched ballistics from the sniper in Kaimuki with a gun recovered at a cache by HPD. They were following up a lead from a suspect picked up on a homicide charge. Jane Doe from the Mainland. Guy's name is Kamiya. His are the only prints. Take Kono. Find out if he's related to the cartel or if his issue with us is something else entirely. Make it fast, Danny, we gotta make sure the Basin op hasn't leaked and we're going in clean.” 

They stand in stunned silence.

“Go, go, go,” Steve urges, shooing them into motion. 

Kono reflexively hands Steve his plate, hot from the microwave, and Steve takes it, with only the slightest wince. As she sets down the dishcloth in her hand and brushes past him, Chin following, Steve sets it back down next to the sink and shakes his hand. 

Danny opens his mouth to say... something. What, he doesn't know. 

“I already had him moved to HQ. Do whatever you gotta do, Danny, to make him talk. Call me as soon as you know.”

“Where are you going?”

“Joe called, too. My testimony is tomorrow. He needs to see me.”

“Tomorrow? But, Steve...”

“It's fine, Danny. I gotta go.”

He tries to leave, just like that, all furious energy out of total unconsciousness. Danny grabs his arm as he spins away. “Steve.”

Steve's eyes are as flat as his tone, just stones in his hollow cheeks. “Danny. I'll meet you at the Basin at ten. Call me about Kamiya, soon as you know.” 

Deep in his chest, behind his sternum, the knot of tension Danny carries tightens. He opens his hand and lets Steve go.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

Kamiya's an ass. He's sporting a bruised cheekbone when Danny and Kono enter interrogation and if Kono accidentally blocks the view of the camera and that bruise has spread a little when they walk out, well, Danny knows nothing about it. He leaves Steve a voicemail and then calls back three times in a row just to annoy the fucker. Steve doesn't even bother sending it to voicemail, just lets it ring. Ass.

Kono watches him from the corner of her eye as they walk back to the bull pen. 

“Stop looking at me.”

“Sure, brah. You don't think he's in trouble, do you?”

“No. I think he's busy. Joe would call if he hadn't gotten to where ever Joe is, and he knows I'd 911 a text if Kamiya was an issue.”

Chin's got Lori's comm problem fixed. The teams are reporting in as scheduled and everyone's in place but Five-0. They trot downstairs to vest up and re-check their ammo in the parking lot. Danny and Kono packed the vehicles before dinner, but Steve's vest is gone. 

“I gave it to him on his way out,” Kono says, when she notices him sifting through the trunk.

“Good. I'll bet he's late, so it's better he has it.” 

Kono quirks her lip up, but doesn't say anything. Smart woman.

“You ready, Lori?” 

“As ever,” she answers and slides into the passenger side of the Camaro.

“You ready, Kono?”

She gives him a smirk and a shaka before she starts around the hood of her car. 

Danny leans into her open passenger window to bump fists with Chin. “See you on the other side.”

***

As it happens, Steve is not late. He pulls in next to the Camaro as Danny turns the ignition off. Lori gives up shotgun. They're just a block back from the Basin. Chin and Kono are four blocks down. From flanking positions, Five-0 will enter the Basin marina behind Custom and Border Patrol's SWAT, DEA falling in as they pass, and regular HPD units entering last, protecting their rear. 

DEA has the communications van, and two agents in the Harbor office at Aloha Tower. HPD's SWAT has sniper-observers on five different buildings. The perimeter is eight blocks square, everybody dark. Danny has no doubt the local criminal element has made them and is laying low, but with the busts they've made, and Diaz telling his bosses it's all cool, he's as sure as Steve seems to be that the cargo's still on schedule. 

Every twenty minutes, 'all clears' echo through Danny's earwig as the teams report in. And every hour on the hour, DEA reports on the activity in the marina. 

“Wish I were there,” Danny mutters to Steve when they report swimmers off the party boat they watched the night before. 

“You'd not only have to swim, Danny, you'd have to skinny dip,” Steve says, smirking. 

“I could do that, Steven,” he counters. “The ladies would love me. We had this quarry outside town when I was a kid, we used to swim naked all summer. Water was a whole lot colder than here, but I still impressed 'em.”

“There were girls there to impress? While you were naked, I mean,” Laurie pipes up from the back seat.

Danny holds his hands up, ready to elaborate, but he can't do it, he laughs instead. “Okay, not so much. But still, I would've impressed them if they were there. You ever...”

“It's Hawaii, Danno,” Steve drawls, at the same time Lori scoffs, “Never with guys.”

“And the teenage girls in Hawaii?”

Steve grins, his teeth impossibly white in the dark.

“We are so moving before Grace gets to high school.”

After one, the DEA reports visuals from the snipers on a white panel van parking near the Ahui gate, but it's nearing two when a call for harbor entry from a commercial vessel under Columbian colors comes into Aloha Tower and is passed on to the Kewalo Basin Harbor Agent for docking clearance. Vessel speed is limited to five knots in the crowded Harbor. “What do you think?” 

“Let's let them start tying off before we move.”

Danny keys his mike. “Five-0 Team Leader requests notice of dock approach.” There's not much info they can gather in the dark on the water and the vessel will only be using running lights. Sweat rolls down his temple and he wipes it away irritably. Steve hands him his gloves and he pulls them on, snugging the leather down between his fingers. 

Frowning, Steve presses on his ear bud. “Copy. Requesting notice of stern line deployment. Give me all teams.” He tilts his head back towards the trunk. Danny lets Lori out of the back while Steve talks. “All Teams, subject vessel is docking at Pier Fifteen, slip nine. One suspect leaving the box truck has entered Ahui gate. Let him board before proceeding onto the Pier. Let's keep it short and sweet and away from the civilians. CBP Team Three has a man on the box truck. Do not engage. Do not engage any suspects unless fired upon.”

Lori steps aside, weapon in hand, and Danny retrieves Steve's MP5 tri-rail, handing it to him as he joins them. Steve will go high, taking out armed resistance from above with Chin going low with the Benelli scattergun that might as well have his name engraved on it. Both Kono and Lori are carrying MP5K automatics and Danny's pulled the short range cleanup with his pistol. He registers the reassuring weight of his Walther at his ankle while he checks the mag on the P30 before settling it back onto his hip. He eyes Lori, notes her gloves and the three extra magazines on her vest. Steve's vest is barren.

When Steve slides his Sig back into his thigh holster, Danny hands him spare mags. After patting his pockets for reassurance, Steve locks his elbow back into the sling of the MP5's shoulder strap and gives Danny a nod. 

“All teams on my go,” Steve says, giving the final heads up. Danny shuts the trunk. Steve rolls his eyes at the double beep as Danny locks the car. “Copy Tower. All Teams go.”

***

Of course, someone gets twitchy when Customs comes thundering down the pier, guns bristling. At this time of the morning foreign fishing boats usually get one sleepy CBP Agent and might not even get that until four or after, when the Marina starts to stir with pedestrians, the commercial crews getting ready to head offshore. 

As the CBP agents take cover to either side from the bullets coming their way, Steve storms straight on and takes down the crewman up top who started shooting first and silence cloaks them. Chin crouches low and they board the boat, Steve taking right and Chin going left, Lori and Kono on board in the next breath. Danny covers them from the dock. They split away from each other, crossing the deck to clear the far side. Danny signals the agents to either side of him to move forward and steps aboard, going right. Two shots shatter the quiet from the far side of the pilot house, followed by the unmistakable crack of an MP5K, but Danny runs towards the stairway into the cabin below, where a tangle of voices has suddenly erupted in angry shouts.

Down below, Steve is laying on the floor, trapped against the wall under a bloody, dark haired man, but his arms are steady, pointing the MK5 center mass at a second man on his knees, pointing a Glock right back at him. They are both yelling.

“Hey,” Danny screams. The man turns his head. “Put it down!” 

Steve surges up onto his knees, shoving the body off himself. 

“Put the gun down right now!” Danny yells, drawing the man's attention back to him again.

The tip of Steve's barrel kisses the man's faded windbreaker. He sits back on his ass, hands going up, letting the Glock dangle from his fingertips. 

Danny moves around the man, listening to the team calling all clears above deck, and takes the gun, laying it on the small table that's folded down behind him. He pats the man's upper body down with one hand.

Lori eases down the stairs. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” Steve answers, focus unwavering. “You okay, Danny.”

“Peachy. Stand up, asshole. Slowly.”

Steve's gun follows him up and he holds on target while Danny gloves up and pats down the guy's bloody jeans, setting aside a large-bladed pocket knife, and cuffs him. “Chin and Kono?”

“Fine.” She points her chin at the body laying in front of Steve. “Is he...”

Finally dropping his gun, Steve reaches down with two fingers and pokes around in the guy's thick neck, readjusting his fingers twice. “Yeah. What's the count?”

“Three dead hostiles and him,” she says.

“What's your name, buddy?” 

Danny's always amazed at how fast Steve's adrenaline drops in these situations, the planned operations. He sounds like he could be asking the guy if he wants a Longboard.

The guy just looks back at him.

“What's it matter now?" Steve says. "You're the only one left.”

“Tao Vargas.”

“Where is it, Vargas?”

Vargas shrugs. 

“Who you working for?”

He shakes his head and looks at his feet.

Danny rolls his eyes and shoves him towards Lori. “Mirandize him up there. Don't let HPD take him, yet.” She slings her rifle over her far shoulder and grabs his elbow to maneuver him up the stairs in front of her. 

Chin darkens the hatchway and then stands to one side and grabs Vargas' other elbow as he comes up. 

“One body down there,” she tells him. 

“On it,” he says, and they both move off, letting the light from the marina drop back into the tiny cabin.

“So,” Danny says. “You going to get up?”

“Yeah, I just...” Steve goes a little breathless and his face twists up. 

“What's wrong, babe?” 

“My foot.” He leans forward and braces both his hands on the body still pressed against his knees and then yanks his right knee forward, wood splintering with the motion.

“What are you doing? Exactly?”

“My foot went through. Here, pull him away.”

Danny squats, so that he's nose to nose with Steve. Steve's tongue tips out, like he's going to lick his dry lips. “Stop. There's blood on your lip.” Steve frowns, drawing his head back sharply and shuts his mouth. 

Standing again, Danny strips the gloves he's wearing off and digs a fresh pair out of his pocket. He hates this shit, that he has three or four pairs of gloves stowed somewhere on him everyday. He yanks on the fresh gloves and then strokes the blood off Steve's upper lip with his index finger. There's blood on his chin, too, so he swipes that off as well. When he looks up, Steve's eyes are closed, so he takes advantage and strokes his thumb across Steve's clean left brow. He looks so tired. “Okay, you're good. Y'know. Relatively.” He doesn't wait, just looks down, grabs ahold of the DB and pulls. The guy's heavy. 

Sitting back down on his folded left leg, Steve glares back at his right boot stuck in the wall and Danny laughs at his expression. Constipation and Aneurysm face combined. Chin comes trotting back down the stairs just then, followed by about three too many CBP officers in Danny's opinion. “Brah! Howzit? Need kokua?”

“Try.”

“Try what?” Danny barks.

“Try means 'please', brah,” Chin explains, hunkering down next to Danny. “Are you stuck, Steve?”

Steve eyes the rear guard stacking up on the cabin stairs. “No,” he growls, and jerks his leg up again. This time his boot comes through with a huge crack, taking a huge amount of fake wood paneling with it. 

“Hey,” Chin says softly. He stretches past Steve, reaching into the gaping wall, and draws out a pink block. “Da kine, bruddah.”

“If you're not SIS, get out,” Danny yells. “And get a tech down here.”

There's a bit of a stampede on the stairs. When they're alone again, Steve scrambles around until he's sitting on his butt facing the wall and starts handing the stash out to Chin. Danny piles it under the folding table.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

When all's said and done, there's no paneling left in the cabin and the entire vessel, including the whole stinky hold full of netted fish, has been searched. They've claimed fourteen false bottomed fish crates and one hundred and twelve large bricks full of pretty, pretty pink packaged coke. The DEA's top team leader estimates the street value at maybe $80 million, after being cut. Four HPD officers cart it out after it's inventoried and Steve has signed it into evidence. 

Max shows up in person, confirms what's been documented by SIS at the scene, and gives permission for the bodies to be removed. Steve holds a team leaders meeting on the pier before everyone finishes up their duties and starts drifting off. When he comes back to where Danny's standing on the bow with his hands in his pockets, he's talking to the Governor by phone.

“Yes, sir.” He stretches to the side a little, unkinking his back. “Thank you, sir. Yes, I will convey your congratulations to my team.” He nods, chewing on his lower lip, and Danny wonders if he's even aware of the slide of his eyes down Danny's body and back up again. Danny's lips tingle as Steve's gaze catches on them. “Yes, sir.” 

He disconnects the call and takes a deep breath, finally meeting Danny's eyes. “The Governor thanks you, Danno.”

Danny can't help but smile back at the easy grin on Steve's face. “You need coffee, babe? You got that Inquiry thing...” He checks his watch. It's ten of seven. “In like two hours.”

“Yeah, I think we're about done here. Let me check with Chin, make sure he's got HPD set with the last of it. Kono and Lori?”

“Finishing up our end at HQ. They should be able to break at noon, get some sleep. We can start plowing through the rest of the paperwork tomorrow.”

“Who's Vargas?”

“Just low level security. HPD took him. I'll make sure there's a copy of his statement on your desk tomorrow.” Pensive, is the word that floats up as Danny watches Steve. “We got the coke, babe. We're done on this one. Let HPD and DEA and CBP hash it out.”

“Okay,” Steve breathes. “Okay.”

“You need coffee, maybe an egg, a shower. You gotta be in uniform, right?”

Steve nods.

Danny dangles his keys. “Give your keys to Chin, babe, and let's go.”

Steve gives him a tight smile and snatches the keys.

***

Danny makes them hard boiled eggs and oatmeal while Steve showers. He pours coffee for Steve when he comes back down, half dressed. They eat standing up and then Danny showers while Steve finishes his spit-polish and makes sure his pins are all on straight. 

He looks good. He always looks a little bit different to Danny when he's in uniform. A little taller, a lot more remote. He's a stranger until the laziest, crookedest smile Danny's ever had the privilege to witness breaks like a slow dawn over Steve's face, lighting him up, warming his eyes.

“Like what you see, Danny?”

“My god, you are such an arrogant ass,” Danny says, with an emphasis on 'such'. That just makes Steve actually grin. And god, Danny has to bite his tongue to stop from saying, 'there you are, thank god, I've missed you so much'. “But how is it that you're living with me and not some knockout and ten kids on the ground all ready, anyway?”

His grin only fades a bit, though Danny could kick himself anyway. He opens the door and waves Danny through. “'Cause gun oil and sweat don't carry quite the same appeal as the clean uniform?”

“Ah,“ Danny says as they walk out to the Camaro. “That's the reason? Not, say, the long months when you can't say where you are, or what you're doing, and the stitches and bruises when you show up again?”

Steve shrugs. “Girls dig stitches.”

“Women don't.”

Clutching his chest, Steve collapses into the driver's seat. “Ouch, Danno, that hurt.”

“You goof.”

Steve smiles at him and starts the car. Danny's head hits the seat back when the Camaro fishtails pulling out of the sand onto the pavement and Steve laughs. “You ass,” Danny mutters and reaches for the suicide handle. 

He doesn't say anything, just lets Steve blow off steam and his nervousness, weaving in and out of traffic, gunning the RPM's when the lights turn green until he hits ten over the limit and cruises to the next intersection. On the highway, he opens the Camaro up and airs her out. When Danny first saw the tiny wireless radar detector just above the dash where it crouches, barely visible, he had laughed. He still wonders if any other cop with HPD can claim to have such a rigged out personal vehicle. 

But there's lines they don't cross. Squiggly lines, sometimes, but still. They don't expect favors if they're speeding off-duty and they don't hit their lights or siren if they aren't on the way to a scene or in pursuit. Danny actually pulls the team's personal ticket histories, both parking and speeding, every quarter and leaves them on Steve's desk. The third quarter, the detectors showed up. Chin's bike's the most sophisticated and the only one with a jammer. 

Danny sometimes can't believe his good fortune in ending up in this God-forsaken place a whole universe away from where he kind of thought he'd always live. He's never had wanderlust. He's happy to listen to Steve talk about Bangkok and Chin regale them with stories from his odd summer spent in Moscow and Poland, and Kono's dreamy soliloquies about surfing the Great Barrier Reef, but listening doesn't inspire him to go see for himself. He guesses he's just not built that way. 

Steve's uniform has been in way more countries than Danny ever pretends he'll see in his entire lifetime. His glimpses of Seoul were all he needed to ever know of Korea. It was hot and sticky. At least Honolulu has the good grace of location to catch a breeze off the ocean. 

Downshifting hard onto the off ramp, Steve's hands are sure on the wheel and the gear shift. He eases them out onto Punchbowl. The traffic's pretty heavy. They doddle along behind an old Daytona for a few minutes before turning onto King Street and the Palace comes into view. 

“You gonna be okay?” Danny asks.

He doesn't think he's going to respond, but then Steve flicks a glance over, lets it bounce back to the road. “Yeah, Danny. I'll be fine. Just put out whatever paperwork fires you have to today and then take off, okay?”

Th truck's parked in front of HQ and Danny notices Steve's shoulders drop incrementally when he sees it. The chicks are all in the barn and accounted for; their role in the case is done; it's Friday and after the Inquiry wraps up, it looks like they might have a free weekend. Danny resolves to cancel his date with Gabby and have steaks and cold beer waiting for Steve when he gets home. 

“Keep the car, I'll take your truck,” he says.

Steve pulls up in front to let Danny out, but Danny can see he's worried about something. He doesn't open his door, just waits to see what Steve's working up to saying.

“I've never lied before, Danny.”

Danny's breath catches in his throat and he has to think to finish breathing in. He lets it back out slow, not sure what to say.

“I've omitted certain circumstances, even a person or two. But I've never lied in a debriefing when asked a direct question. They've asked me three times now about SEAL Team Nine, about Wade Gutches. They know we were in Seoul at the same time. Gutches did a good job with the R and R cover, got them noticed, they all used their credit cards. But...” He closes his eyes, presses the heel of his hand to his forehead.

“You've done good, Steve. They weren't SEALS that day. They weren't working for the government. They were just guys on vacation and they did us, you and me, and Chin, and Kono, and Lori, a favor. They repaid a debt they felt they owed you. You are not lying when you say we had no active duty military back-up. All we had were friends with skills and contacts. They are our friends and they helped us get you back.”

“That's just semantics.”

“Se... semantics? Now you know what semantics means? You are the king of semantics! You and I both know that no matter how much I jerk your chain you only break the rules because you know them inside and out! C'mon, Steve, are you kidding me? How is this any different than blowing that pawn shop door with a grenade due to imminent destruction of evidence or reporting reasonable use of psychological persuasion without physical or lasting mental harm to protect innocent life or well-being when we dangle someone off a roof or tie them to a car hood? For Christ's sake, how is it different than stealing ten million dollars to save Chin's life?”

“Nobody ever asked me directly if I stole that money. Not the governor, not IA.”

“You're missing the point here, babe.”

Steve sighs and lifts his head to look out his window, away from Danny. Above the crisp collar of his uniform jacket, the long line of his throat is taut when he swallows hard. The double gold leaves of Steve's rank draws Danny's attention. He forgets how long Steve served at others' command. He has no doubt men died under Steve's command and that Steve entered every deadly conflict knowing he might die under command, that there were situations and people deemed more important than himself.

“Your life, Steven, is worth the same as every innocent life you've ever saved.”

“I'm not an innocent, Danny.”

“You're not. You're a goddamn hero. Your friends and your ohana think you're worth risking their necks and freedom for; Joe thinks you're worth losing his military career. You're not lying, Steve, when you keep SEAL Team Nine out of it, you're protecting them from Wo Fat.” And holy shit, he so does not know why he just said that, but it's kind of true. Without any written report of their involvement, Wo Fat has no way of knowing who helped Five-0 strip Steve away from him. There's no audio or video in existence to help him. 

Steve straightens in his seat, his jaw firming, and finally faces Danny. “That's true. We've managed to slow him down a little, but I have no doubt he'll eventually get access to the Inquiry Board reports, maybe even the NCIS statements.”

“But the investigation into SEALs on R and R won't be linked without corroboration from any of us.”

Steve nods. “Thanks, Danny.”

Danny pulls the door handle and shoves the passenger door open. “See you later?” Like it's a question, but Danny doesn't seem to have a thought process right now.

“Yeah, see you later.”

Hands in his pockets, Danny watches him pull away, only becoming aware of Chin standing next to him once Steve's out of the lot and accelerating down King.

“He'll do fine, brah,” Chin says.

“I know. Feel like coffee?”

Chin grins at him. “Just where I was going. Paperwork's elbow deep up there. Want to come?”

“Love to.”

***

After sending Lori and Kono home at noon, Danny picks at Cheetos and and a stale sandwich from the multi-agency leftovers in the break room while he reviews their paperwork and writes his initial reports. He finishes the follow-up on the raids at Ackers Machine and the drug house in Kaimuki and checks in on where HPD is at with Curtis Maywood. He strolls down with Chin to Holding on their way out around three to put eyes on Kamiya, their little sniper friend. Lori discovered his connection to a case they wrapped eight months ago. His auntie lives in the condos and it was pure coincidence he noticed Steve walking in. For now, there's enough to hold him through the weekend without bail. All Danny really wants is two days of quiet.

He shares a fist bump with Chin in the parking lot, kind of wishing he could steal Chin's bike instead of clambering up into Steve's truck. He wants to drive fast, with all the windows down, but settles for trundling along, the fan on the AC turned all the way up. Catching sight of two kids on bikes, he glances at his watch. Grace's tennis lesson starts at three-thirty, and he can catch the last twenty minutes if he goes straight there.

“Danno!” Grace yelps when she spots him beyond the chain link. 

“Hey, Monkey!” he calls back. 

The instructor is a kid named Kye. Danny ran a background check on him and knows that although he looks twelve, he's actually twenty-six, married with child, pays his bills and mortgage on time, and has not so much as a speeding ticket to his name. “Aloha, Detective Williams,” he says.

“Kye.”

“We have a few minutes left in Grace's lesson.”

“Is it all right if I watch?”

Kye defers to Grace and she nods eagerly. 

Danny parks his butt on the bench built into the rock retaining wall that runs along the courts. He's never played tennis, but Gracie likes it and he can see how much she's improved in the couple of months since he and Steve stopped in last. He can feel Rachel before he looks up and sees her hesitating on the stairs above him. He smiles at her and she tilts her head before saying his name in that soft way that pinches his heart.

“Is everything all right?” she continues, coming to sit beside him. Her belly proceeds her, larger than just last week, he's sure. She's carrying low and he wants to lay his hand on her, feel the firm roundness he can see, knowing there's life stirring just under her skin, wanting to feel it shift against his palm, but he resists, fisting his hand instead. 

His lips twist and he fights to make it a crooked smile instead of a grimace. “Yeah,” he says, but it comes out low and weak, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Just tired. Long night.”

Her wide, dark eyes scrutinize his face. He turns his head and concentrates on Grace.

“She's getting better,” he comments and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. 

“Hmmm,” Rachel responds. “She enjoys it. She's started playing matches on Thursdays. The Club team.”

“That's good,” Danny murmurs. He's glad Grace has plans with friends tonight. He swallows hard when it occurs to him he needs tonight alone with Steve. Needs it like he needs food or sleep. 

They sit companionably in silence until Gracie's done and then he tucks them both into Rachel's car and waves them off. He fails at trying not to think of them laughing with Stan over dinner, Stan and Grace taking the dog out to play while Rachel goes up to draw a bath. How if he were there, he'd scoop ice cream for Grace when they came back in and then slip upstairs to soak in the sight of Rachel in the tub. Kneel beside her and fill the pitcher she keeps there with warm water and spill it over the curves of her back and breasts and belly. Run his hands over her rounded skin, that tiny beating heart below.

***

Dusk has set in by the time Danny hears his car in the drive. He doesn't shift from his chair in the sand, but his stomach swirls over on itself. He wants to ignore it, but it's like his body hones in on the anticipation of Steve's arrival, which just strikes him as ridiculous and stupid. Gulls are fighting over a scrap of something down the beach and a breeze has kicked up, licking the dampness from his heated skin.

It takes longer than he expects for Steve to make his way outside. When he finally hears the screen door and Steve's step on the tiles of the lanai, he takes a long swallow of his warm beer and then dips a cold bottle out of the bucket between the chairs and holds it up. 

Steve takes it, but doesn't open it. “Come running with me.”

Danny grunts without thinking; it bursts from the back of his throat. Running? Really? Steve's thrumming with pent-up energy, but exhaustion is hollowing his cheeks and eyes and he's staring down at the sand, like he already knows what Danny's going to say. And he can feel those words forming, backing up in his mouth, pressing against his lips. He swallows them down, but doesn't trust himself, so he just nods. He's standing before he manages to wrangle his traitor voice into submission. “Give me a sec.”

Steve closes his eyes, pathetically grateful, and Danny knows he chose the best path. He goes inside and changes into shorts and laces on his sneakers. At least this way, he can control the length of the run, get Steve back before he kills any appetite he might have after his long day. The steaks are marinating in a tried and true concoction that Danny hasn't bothered making since he left Jersey. He wants to watch Steve's face when he tastes it. Shit, he just wants Steve to eat it, period. But he'll like it, Danny knows he will.

Steve's standing in the same spot when he gets back to him, but he's drained his beer and set the bottle down next to Danny's half-empty. They are leaning in the sand, propping each other up and Danny shakes his head at the irony. 

“C'mon, Superman, let's tire you out,” he says, striding past Steve without stopping. 

Steve shakes himself, reminding Danny vividly of Mrs. Lapkowski's lanky Irish Setter mix, and follows him down to the firmer sand of the tide line.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

Grilling the steaks is worth the trouble, and they eat outside. Steve manages most of his, picks at the cheesy risotto that's mostly not burnt, and finishes off the last of the asparagus. After they've cleaned up, he accepts Danny's offer to help him stretch his shoulders. 

Steve opens the front door to let the cooler night air into the warm living room through the screen. The vanilla scent of the musk fern planted off the porch wafts in with it. They move the coffee table closer to the couch and Steve, barefoot and shirtless, lies down on his back on the thin rug laid atop the hardwood floor. He lets Danny raise his arms over his head, one at a time, and press his weight down onto the front of his shoulder, one hand on his elbow, one steady and flat below Steve's collar bone like the PT showed him. 

And Steve starts talking, his breath hitching now and again in response to Danny's shifting weight. 

The board reviewed his statements, sometimes asking him to read certain passages aloud, before questioning him closely about those sections concerning Joe's actions on his behalf and the actions of his team, so far as he was aware of them at the time. He sat outside while NCIS Agent Hammond and his partner testified and then was allowed in to listen to the portions pertaining to himself. He denied any and all assertions that other active duty personnel were involved. He was asked if he knew any of the members of SEAL Team Nine, who happened to be in the same general vicinity at the time of his rescue, and related the previous interaction with them on their recent Five-O case as his only point of contact with them. 

He falls silent after that. Danny sits back on his heels, and idly uses his thumbs to work in under Steve's collarbone on his right side. Steve takes a deep breath, turning his face away, stretching his neck so that the muscle under Danny's firm touch tightens and pulls.

“Here,” Danny says, taking his elbow. “Put your arm back down.” The muscle softens as he does, letting Danny work his fingertips in deeper. He strokes up Steve's neck to his hair line, long thrusts that make Steve's breath come harder. Kneading back over the collarbone, he rubs small circles over the top of Steve's shoulder and down onto his back, lifting his arm and placing it over his thigh to work the edge of Steve's shoulder blade out to his arm pit and onto his tricep. “Better?”

“Yeah.”

Since Steve doesn't move, Danny scoots around him and does the other side. When he's done, he smooths both his palms down Steve's neck and across the tops of his shoulders several times until Steve's breathing slows and he relaxes, going loose and sinking under the pressure of Danny's hands. 

“Hey. Don't go to sleep here.”

“I'm not,” Steve says, sounding disconcertingly alert even though his eyes are still closed and he's breathing deep and slow. “Your hands are warm.”

Steve's left arm is still akimbo over Danny's leg and he absently closes his fingers on Steve's bicep as he thinks. “You know one of the things I miss most about being married?”

Steve hmmms and adjusts his arm a little, so Danny's stroking into his elbow. Danny presses into the crook with both thumbs and Steve heaves a huge, breathy sigh.

“Just being touched. I didn't realize until months after we separated that my skin practically hurt I missed it so bad.” He presses into the thick muscle of Steve's forearm, following the groove between the bones down onto the fresh new skin of his wrist, walks the tendons there into the palm of Steve's hand, which curls up reflexively before flattening under the onslaught of Danny's fingers. 

Distantly, he hears Steve's low groan and suddenly Danny can feel his heart pumping in his chest, and his breath scrapes his throat. He works Steve's fingers, the contours of his knuckles to the tips, one at a time, aware of the low warmth building in his belly, the thickening of his cock. 

He doesn't dare look anywhere, but at Steve's fingers under his. He knows that on the receiving end, it's a normal reaction, and it's certainly his normal reaction as a giver, but he's only ever been the giver of massages to Rachel or girlfriends before her and that always led to... other things. And Steve's... Steve. He clears his throat. “Want me to-”

“Yeah,” Steve croaks before he can finish asking. 

Danny doesn't know the easiest way to get to Steve's other side. His knee's been good, but still gets stiff and aches for a few steps after he sits on it any length of time. He doesn't want Steve seeing him gimp when he gets up. His only other choice, though, is just crawling over him. 

What the fuck, Danny thinks. He just won't stop to straddle him, right? Before he loses his nerve, he throws a knee over Steve at mid-thigh, willfully ignores the taut, flaming heat of him, and the deep, choked sound he makes in response, and crosses over him. 

He settles again under Steve's other arm and focuses on his bicep. Steve gives up after a minute and practically melts like candle wax. By the time he gets down to the rapidly fading scar encircling Steve's wrist, Danny's calmer. He's pleasantly aroused, but it's not overwhelming. He's glad he didn't think to grab some lotion, that probably would have done him in. Danny crests the heel of Steve's hand and buries his thumb into his palm, letting his fingers ride the ridges of the bones on the back of it. 

“Hey,” he ventures, watching the red flush and blanche of Steve's finger tips as he finishes. “I'm gonna get you a bottle of water, okay?”

He sees the brief movement of Steve's head from the corner of his eye. 

Danny creaks up, one hand on the coffee table and straightens his knee slowly. He limps three or four steps before it eases and he's fine when he hits the kitchen. Knowing Steve prefers the tap to bottled, he grabs two glasses, splashes cold water into them and gulps one down while braced against the sink to give himself a minute. Just yesterday, he'd have scoffed and possibly taken a swing if anyone had predicted he'd willingly spend forty minutes kneeling on a hard floor to rub on Steve McGarrett.

He snorts out his next breath, re-fills his glass and makes his way back out to the living room where Steve's sitting propped up against the coffee table, looking completely spaced. Danny's eye is drawn to the obvious outline of Steve's half-filled cock and when he averts his gaze, it rebounds right up into Steve's eyes looking back at him. Steve's amused. 

“What,” Danny challenges.

Steve just smiles and holds his hand up to take one of the glasses Danny's still holding. “Thanks, Danno.”

“You're welcome, McGarrett.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

They both drink. Danny finally backs off and sits down in Steve's recliner. Everything kind of seeps back in and now he can hear the surf rolling again, over and over. He's been completely unaware of it until now. “See if there's a game on, would you?”

Steve twists to snatch the remote from the table at his back and flicks the TV on. 

***

Steve sleeps through the night or at least makes no noise that wakes Danny, but he's still up before him, damp from bathing in the ocean and making coffee when Danny wanders from the bathroom in search of something that will kickstart him into the day.

Gracie delights in the Aloha Stadium swap meet. They talk about Christmas and about her trip to England the day after and how Danny needs to text lots of pictures of Malia in her wedding dress and save her a piece of cake for when she comes home on the third. Danny helps her pick out a pair of sea-glass earrings for Rachel and they find a letter-opener with square faces depicting the Haka grimaces carved into its wooden handle for Stan. 

Back home, Steve grills them burgers before Danny drops Grace at her friend Stacy's for a sleepover. Steve is out on the beach when he returns, with a dozen Longboards on ice. He makes all the right sounds while Danny bitches about Christmas and then they sit and watch the surf in amiable silence. Danny heads in at the four beer mark and dozes for awhile before he sleeps, but he's pretty sure Steve never comes back in at all. 

Forcing himself up early on Sunday, Danny finds hot coffee in the pot in the kitchen, grabs a quick shower and shave, and scoots out to grab Grace, bringing her back to the house so that they can make way too many pancakes. Danny winces at the face Steve makes when he comes in from his run, drenched in sweat.

“We got this, Steve,” Danny reassures him. “Go shower, you stink.”

Grace giggles like a loon, her hand over her mouth.

His whole demeanor transforms in a second as Steve smirks and then raises his brows in question.

She does a bobble-head nod, and points out, “You're dripping all over the floor.”

Steve shakes his wet head, flinging sweat, and Grace can't contain herself, laughing and laughing while she tries to say, “Ew, Uncle Steve, you're such a boy.” and that just cracks Danny's shit right up. 

“You're such a boy,” he mimics, drawing it out, and Steve flashes him a brilliant grin before he makes his escape, which is a very good thing, because Danny's throat has closed against the spike of lust shooting up from his groin and despite Grace standing there, he's not sure what he'd do if Steve were still standing close enough to touch.

They do a half-assed cleanup of the flour off the counters and floor and stack the bowls in the sink while Steve showers and then present him with a short stack he can't refuse. Grace has buttered every one, but taking pity on Steve, Danny uses a light hand with the syrup. 

Having chattered and danced and braided hair all night, Grace conks out around two in front of the TV. Lizzie McGuire is singing at the Trevi Fountain. Danny yawns and decides to get a beer. He has no idea where Steve disappeared to after gamely finishing his brunch. He snags two beers out of the fridge and meanders out to the lanai. Steve is in the hammock, legs akimbo, one arm across his belly and the other above his head, down for the count. Danny can't quite draw a full breath. 

In board shorts and a loose polo, Steve looks so young. His jaw is relaxed, his mouth just barely open, and his forehead is smooth. The scar Wo Fat left high on his cheek is a vivid red hook upon the pale skin of his face.

Danny closes his eyes against the burn of tears welling up for no goddamn good reason he can think of and shuts it off. When the ache of his held breath forces him to breathe again, he opens his eyes and goes to sit at the outside table, where he can watch Steve, but still listen for Grace. 

He doesn't know how long he sits there, but the shadows are getting long when he hears a faint shuffle from inside and Grace calls for him, just loud enough that he can tell she's still sleepy; not panicked, but not actually sure he's still there. 

“Grace,” he says, not loud, but firm, watching for her to hear him and come out the door.

“Danno,” she yells, relief coloring the words and steps out.

A flurry of movement from the corner of his eye has him standing, turning to Steve, who lands on his feet in a defensive crouch, sending the hammock swinging, hand reaching for his lower back. Danny's torn; reaching out in both directions. He takes one step towards Grace, who's still coming at him. 

Steve's arm comes up, his hand righting the gun as it does, other hand coming up to close on it in a two handed grip. 

“No,” Danny shouts. “Steve!”

Eyes dead, Steve's aiming at Grace's motion. Danny finally gets in front of her, facing Steve, both his hands up, palms out.

“Steve! No!”

Grace is tucking herself in close to him, a warm weight against the backs of his thighs. His right hand lands on her back, holding her close, his left still outstretched as Steve unerringly tracks her and ends up on Danny's center mass. 

“Steve!”

His index finger, stretched out along the frame, shifts down, sliding onto the trigger.

“For God's sake, Steve! Stop!”

He sees it happen, the moment Steve shakes loose and wakes the fuck up, his eyes flooding with horror. 

He goes stark white and sweat beads up on his face; his hands start to shake. His mouth opens, but then he's spinning away, gracefully, still graceful, so easily sweeping his body low to deposit the gun on the ground even as he's bolting off the lanai onto the grass. He falls to his knees and retches- the most horrible, strangled noise Danny's ever heard.

“Daddy,” Grace chokes out, her hot breath soaking through his khakis. 

He drops down and pulls her into him, wrapping himself around her. Standing back up, he carries her through the dining room and on into the kitchen, needing walls between her and Steve. He paces, hugging her to him, muttering 'it's okay, you're okay' as he strokes her back and she cries into his neck with little breathy sobs that he finally realizes are words- “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” over and over again. 

He stops and bumps her away from him a bit, says “Grace. Look at me. Hey, Grace.” 

Snuffling, she lifts her head. Her face is red and tear streaked and she's so beautiful he can't breathe. He tightens his hold on her, hugs her tight again and then makes to set her down. She clings with both legs. 

“Grace, sweetheart,” he murmurs and tries again. This time she lets go and stands. He steadies her until he's sure she's solid and then crouches down to talk to her. “You, babe, did nothing wrong. Steve...” 

Danny has to close his eyes and get a firm grip on the part of him that pretends he's an adult and a parent and a reasonably reasonable man. He grasps at the thought he has in his head and yanks it forward and looks directly into Gracie's wide, hurt eyes. “Steve didn't mean... he didn't mean to do that, he was startled. He was having a bad dream, I think.” 

He scrubs a hand over his face, telling himself he can say this out loud, that he means it. “Steve will never hurt you, babe, never.” As he hears himself say it, he's dismayed to find he believes it. 

Still, either Steve never carries a gun in the house again, or Gracie never comes to visit again, ever.

“Go wash your face, Grace, and wet a cold washcloth for Steve, okay?”

“Is he sick?”

“Yeah, baby. Flu, maybe. There's a thermometer in the right hand drawer of the upstairs bathroom, why don't you get that, too?” 

Fuck him, right? If he's gonna go all psycho, the least he can do is suffer through Gracie's ministrations for the rest of the evening. It'll give him an excuse to drop her back with Rachel tonight instead of keeping her to take to school in the morning. God damn, Steve. 

When she nods and gives him a small smile, he hugs her again and she trots off. He goes out to Steve, who is sitting dazed, on his butt in the grass, arms around his spread knees, not far from the nothing he had in his stomach, staring out towards the restless waves. 

Danny is careful as he approaches, saying Steve's name quietly, and then crossing into his line of sight. Steve hangs his head, so that Danny can't catch his eyes.

“I'm here, okay?” Danny tells him. Steve's breathing fast. Sweat has pooled and soaked the neckline of his polo and a wide spot between his shoulders. “I'll be right back.”

Back tracking, he picks up Steve's gun. It's a small Sig Sauer P380, a .38 single action, perfect for concealment, and one Danny doesn't remember having seen before among Steve's collection. The hammer is cocked and the thumb safety on. Danny has no doubt it was off when Steve stroked the trigger and that he re-engaged it by training as he set it down. He releases the full mag and pockets it, and then pulls back the slide, and drops the chambered cartridge into his hand. 

“Daddy?” Grace says in a small, worried voice from the open door.

“Yeah, baby,” he says, taking in her hesitation, her solemn expression. She has the washcloth and thermometer case in the white-knuckled grip of one hand and a bottle of Gatorade in the other. He sets the gun on the lanai table and pats the back of the chair under his hand. “Come sit over here, okay?”

She nods and comes easily, lifting her chin to find Steve out on the grass. She doesn't take her eyes off him as puts her items down next to the gun and Danny helps her with the chair. “Is he okay?”

“No, Gracie, that's why he needs you, okay? Think you can forgive him?”

Her eyes stray to the gun, but then she looks up at Danny, and his heart twists. No one should ever open themselves up that wide, trust anyone that much, but she does. She's trusting him with everything. Her innocence, her love, her precious, precious life. When she nods, his knees go weak and his bowels loosen, his heart thudding. He wants to shake her, tell her not to look at him like that, not to just believe him like that. Her attention shifts back to Steve and Danny sucks in a deep breath. “Okay,” he whispers, trying to reassure himself more than her. “It's okay.” 

He draws himself up, stuffs his fear down deep, and resolves to do whatever he has to in the next few minutes, the next hours, the scary days to come, to make this okay. Make Steve okay, because he's not. He's not okay and Danny's not okay with Steve not being okay. “Okay,” he says, again. “All right.”

He strides to Steve, reaching down as he arrives and although Steve startles at his sudden re-appearance, he takes his hand and lets Danny pull him up and steady him. 

“I'm sorry, Danno.”

Anger rushes in to tighten all those quivery spots in him, souring his stomach. “Don't,” Danny blurts, before he clenches his jaw shut. He swallows. “You don't call me Danno, Steve. Not...” He stops, tries to rein in the viciousness lacing his words together. “Not right now.”

The face Steve gives him is almost as bad as Grace's. Raw. Vulnerable. He definitely needs to leave- the concept's barely formed, a whisper he doesn't want to hear, a feeling snaking through him. 

Make changes, he tells himself. I need to make some changes. He's going to have a heart attack, going from terrified to enraged to aching with something he doesn't even know how to name. He shoves Steve away from him, though he hangs on to his arm, steering him back to the lanai. He pushes him down into the chair next to Grace, who is smart enough to keep her mouth shut and just hold the wet washcloth out in offering. Steve's hand is shaking when he takes it. 

Danny rolls his eyes and snatches up the thermometer, sliding it out of its case. He glares at the digital readout and punches the button about four times before he pauses and lets it actually set itself. Steve's holding himself stiff and still, simply holding the washcloth. “Open your mouth,” he barks.

Although he looks mutinous and confused at the same time, Steve does as he's told. Danny takes the cold wash cloth from him and plops it down on the back of Steve's neck, making him flinch. 

Grace opens the Gatorade and holds it out. Raising one eyebrow at her, Steve takes it. “When I have flu, I always get Gatorade to drink,” she explains. Steve frowns. “You like it, don't you?”

Danny presses his fingers into Steve's neck and Steve nods at Grace. 

Grace grins, the one that made a Buckingham Guard quirk a lip in response, and Danny's mood swings again. He could get seasick from it. The thermometer beeps and Danny grabs it even as Grace is reaching out. 

“I got it, sweetie.” He makes a show of reading it. Despite the fact that he's still damp with sweat, and Danny can feel the heat of his skin right through the cold cloth, Steve runs low, apparently. He's at 97.2. “Yep. 101.2.”

“Oh,” Grace says. “Does your skin hurt, Uncle Steve? I hate that!”

Head tilting, Steve opens his mouth. Danny digs his fingers back into his neck, a little harder this time, and Steve's teeth click together, he closes his jaw so hard. He coughs, about the worst fake Danny's ever heard, and then grates out, “Yeah, Grace. My neck hurts, too.” 

Danny retaliates silently. Steve grunts and swats at his hand. Scooping the wash cloth up, he holds it out to Grace and asks her to go re-soak it and find Steve the bottle of ibuprofen. When she goes running inside, Danny cuffs the back of Steve's head and comes around to fall into her empty chair. He points his chin at the gun. “When did you get that?”

Aneurysm Face makes an appearance and Steve keeps his mouth shut. 

Shifting, Danny leans forward, elbows on the table, shoving the gun away. “Look. Grace is used to guns. Did you know she can probably break that one down without ever having seen it before and reassemble it in under five minutes? She can load cartridges into a magazine. She can fire that thing without hurting herself. She might not hit her target, but she won't kill anyone she doesn't intend to. Did you know that?”

He has Steve's full attention, although he's keeping himself shuttered down and blank.

“Rachel, too. I was a lead detective in a precinct that regularly came up against wanna-be's – and sometimes the real thing. Gang-bangers, sometimes literally, mobsters, drug lords. Now, with Five-O, with...” He can't... he turns his head towards the beach, blinking hard.

“Wo-Fat,” Steve says. The name leaps out of his mouth low and hard. 

“Yeah,” Danny says.

“That's why.” Steve swallows down hard. “I got it. I've been carrying it. Ever since.”

Danny nods, feeling sick. So much for locking the gun safe that first week. Only paranoid survivalists and the mentally deranged carry in their own homes. “At night?” 

“Holster velcroed to the head board.”

An image of Steve crowded against the headboard after his nightmares blossoms in Danny's brain. 

“Shoulder not the only reason you haven't been swimming?” A muscle jumps in Steve's jaw as he stares at the table top. It's weathered wood, but smooth under Danny's restless fingertips. “You have guns stashed upstairs and down. You have the training to get to them, Steven.”

Steve remains mute. Danny glances towards the house, sees Grace coming past the windows to the door. 

“The point is, Grace is trained enough that your gun sitting there doesn't scare her. But, you, Steven, you scared her. And you're scaring me, too.”

Steve lifts his head. He's wrecked. Danny can see that, but he cages his heart and turns to Grace as she comes back out. “Thanks, monkey. Go pack your stuff up. Can't have you catching flu from Steve.”

“I'm sorry, Uncle Steve, for scaring you.”

Appalled that Grace is the one apologizing, Danny freezes. A tiny, stricken sound from Steve turns his head and he flushes hot at Steve's expression.

Tears spill over Steve's cheeks as he stares at Grace. “I'm so sorry, Grace,” he whispers.

Grace steps forward and pats his shoulder. “Don't cry. Danno says...”

“Grace,” Danny croaks, reaching for her. She leans closer to Steve instead, though, avoiding him.

“...that you'd never hurt me.”

“I wouldn't. I won't. I promise.”

“Okay,” she says, but steps back in haste as Steve stumbles up, all color draining from his face.

“I'm gonna...” 

They watch him hurry inside and then Grace gives Danny a stern look. “You have to take care of him, Danno.”

Danny drags her into a tight hug. “I know, monkey, I will.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

In the end, Danny pretends to check on Steve once and then ignores him until he's fed Grace and ensured she's somewhat recovered from having Steve pull a gun on her and coaches her, as guilty as it makes him feel, on what to say to Rachel. God, he hopes she doesn't have nightmares. He's already decided Grace won't be back here any time soon, but the logistics of that are still escaping him. He speaks only briefly with Rachel, downplaying the incident. He doesn't want her upset if Grace needs to talk. He makes it clear he'll keep Grace safe.

On the way back to Steve's, Lori calls to tell him the Governor's Office has scheduled a big press conference in the morning to announce the Friday morning drug bust at Honolulu Harbor. HPD still doesn't know which cartel the drugs belong to and their suspect from the fishing boat is playing mute for fear of reprisals, but none of that is on Five-O. The Governor wants all agencies present and his task force front and center. 

“You talk to Steve, yet?”

“He didn't pick up, that's why I called you.”

“I'll let him know when I get back to the house.”

They hang up and out of curiosity, Danny speed dials Steve. It rings once.

“Yeah,” Steve says, his voice dull. “We got a case?”

“No, babe,” Danny says and could slit his own throat for the soft way the words tumble out of his mouth without permission. “Press conference tomorrow morning. Eight. At the Marina.”

There's silence and after a moment, Danny holds his phone away from his ear and checks the connection.

“Steve?”

“Yeah. Joe's got his Board tomorrow morning.”

“We don't need you at the shop, Steve. Just doing follow-up paperwork and Chin's got court prep for that Jenkins thing from August.”

“Okay.” His breath is heavy. Danny wonders if he woke him. “Are you...”

“Am I, what?”

“Are you coming back here tonight?”

“Yeah, Steve, but...”

“I know. I know, Danny. Just... can we... can we not talk about it tonight?”

How did they get here? To Steve McGarrett sounding just a little too broken and Danny feeling completely out of his depth? Danny can't even stay mad at him for igniting that crystal in his belly, the little one that Danny knows from experience will grow into a wall of ice that Danny won't be coming back from when it comes to altering their friendship. For Grace's sake, he'll let that wall keep him at arm's length from now on. Danny won't enable Steve anymore in this fucking co-dependent attraction thing they have between them. The one in which Steve doesn't say much and Danny keeps trying to protect him from himself.

“Danny?”

“Tomorrow's fine. See you in a few.” He disconnects without waiting for Steve to reply.

The house is dark, only the porch light and Steve's light upstairs on when Danny gets there. Steve doesn't come down and Danny doesn't go up. He does check to see if the new Sig is still in the back of the silverware drawer where he put it and his guts clench in his belly when he sees that Steve's re-claimed it, along with the cartridge from beside the bowl holding apples and kiwis. 

John McGarrett's Glock is still in its customary place, though. Danny pulls out a beer and sips it in the dark of the living room. When the repetitive crash of the surf finally breaks through his thoughts, he finds an empty beer bottle in his hand. He turns on the TV and sets the volume down low before he goes to get ready for bed. 

***

“I see you broke out the formal wear, too, huh?” McGarrett snarks the next morning. 

“Dog and pony show. Perfect occasion to wear a tie.”

Kono leans over. “I always like a tie,” she confides. 

Danny tries a smile on, mouths 'I know', but knows it doesn't look convincing when Kono softens her eyes in sympathy. 

Steve was already gone when he woke up. It was nice to have the house to himself for a bit, but he couldn't help feeling untethered, not sure what his next move should be. The only rental house he'd both liked and could afford, Steve had squashed. He'd scared the first two realtors off and made Danny feel like a heel for using Jersey piss to find a reasonable place to live. He didn't like any of the many rentals available that were just portioned off rooms or in-law suites in single family homes, and truthfully, Danny hadn't either. He had Grace to think of, after all. He'd been shocked at the results of more than one of the background checks he'd run. 

All the way to the Marina, he'd fingered his phone, resisting the urge to hear Steve's voice in his ear, to be reassured he had climbed back into his armor and set off into his day cocked and ready for action despite his current internal struggle. 

But now he's standing beside him and it feels all wrong. 

***

The call to Five-0 comes in at 09:26. A school bus full of hostages.

At 1:16, Danny's heart's beating out of his chest as he fish tails into the dirt lot where the white van and all the coke from the harbor bust is burning. Lori is already getting out of her car. Danny can see Steve standing, waiting for them, so he slows down, gulps down a little air and pretends everything's all right. 

Steve's a little wild eyed, but he's thinking. He's been spot on all day. Danny can't say he doesn't experience a childish glee when Steve leaves Lori at the scene to meet the fire trucks and HPD while they beat it back to the Palace, where he's been transferred at their request, to pound on Vargas. 

Steve says it first, calls Castillo by name. But Danny's still a little taken aback when he gives way, lets Danny drive a punch into Castillo's smirk. Maybe it's his shoulders, maybe he thinks he owes Danny for Grace, the fact that Castillo played them at Halawa by claiming he had daughters to protect. Danny doesn't really care. It feels good to drive his frustration into the soft give of skin, bruise his knuckles on teeth. Any fucker coward enough to grab kids deserves a six foot hole. Or maybe a shark cage without the cage. Maybe just roll him in chum and dump him overboard. 

He's not wearing gloves, and Castillo bleeds right away, sorry asshole, so he's careful. Wishes he could hit the fucker again, but instead he presses his fingers into Castillo's jaw, makes sure he's facing Steve.

“Let me tell you something,” Steve says. His tone is soft and Castillo giggles at him, not understanding how very, very bad that tone is when Steve uses it. Steve taps his cheek, even as Danny bounces his head back into the concrete block. “Look at me. I don't care who you are, I don't care if you're Vargas or Castillo, if we don't get those kids back, there's gonna be a toe tag hanging off your foot, gonna say you're John Doe.”

Castillo laughs, but Danny knows Steve means it. 

And by all means, if Steve needs him to, Danny will help hide the fucker in the system until he's buried in a pauper's grave.

***

Later, when they are standing over Castillo's bitch, and after Steve's briefed the responding SIS and had his gun cleared, Danny tells him it's going to be a three hour wait for a licensed CDL driver to drive the school bus to the cement yard after SIS clears it, and there's no other vehicle available for transport through HPD until at least eight. “I'd suggest having the parents come pick them up here, but...”

“Yeah, no. That'd be...”

“Bad. A very bad idea. Probably have to jail half of them on traffic violations and pick the others up in pieces off the highway.”

“I've got a CDL.”

Danny huffs and shakes his head, pressing on the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve the headache that has been building since he missed lunch. “Of course, you do.” 

They retrieve the bus while Chin coordinates an escort for it of HPD officers driving Five-0's vehicles. Steve wants his team on the bus, just in case. 

Danny gets on last. Steve gives him a ridiculously loopy grin and shuts the door with a sharp jerk of the handle. The kids are loud, talking about the mountain of dirt, the cops all over, the two ambulances still on site, their lights flashing. Steve waggles his brows and tilts his head at the empty seat immediately behind him. Danny's chest goes queer with pride and affection. Steve may be a danger to all who stand close to him, but Danny wouldn't want him any other way. 

At the Academy, after the initial furor has died down, a warm, heavy hand claps his shoulder. “You did good, brah,” Chin says beside him.

Danny tears his gaze away from Steve as he accepts yet another hug from a teary mom and grins at Chin. “We all did. You, with that loader. Can you teach me to do that?”

Chin laughs. Danny thinks he can just see a hint of red creeping onto his cheeks. 

“My uncle can,” he says.

“And Kono, coming up with that phone tip, linking it to Schaffer,” Danny adds, waving one hand in the air.

“We're good together, Five-0.”

“We are.”

Chin sobers and nods towards Steve. “He doing okay?”

“No.” Danny buries his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. “I don't know. Maybe?”

“I'm still digging into Shelbourne. Maybe that'll help.”

It's like glue's been poured down his throat. Danny can't seem to unstick his words. He nods. 

“I'll collect Schaffer, meet you at HQ.” 

By getting there first, Danny manages to claim the Camaro's driver's seat after Steve reluctantly relinquishes the bus keys to the Academy's headmistress. He drives them back to the sandwich shop near HQ and orders and pays for lunch while Steve stands outside with his phone to his ear, glaring at the sidewalk.

“Governor,” he mouths when Danny comes back out and waves him back to the car. After three 'yes, sirs' and a 'I'll tell them, sir', he finally disconnects.

Danny knows that if they go to HQ, Steve'll get distracted and then neither of them will get to eat, so he throws the keys on the dash and plows into the bag as Steve folds himself into the passenger seat. 

“We gonna eat in the car?” Steve asks.

Danny grunts in the affirmative with his mouth full. Plain turkey and swiss never tasted so good. The tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes.

“You've got mayo on your cheek.”

Whatever. “Eat already,” he says before he takes another bite. “Before the Tarza Cartel catches up and you have to leave to blow the harbor up.” 

He just ordered them the same thing because it was easy and if Steve wasn't coming in, Danny wasn't going to try and guess what he wanted. Steve's has lettuce, though, and a tiny bit of that brown mustard, instead of mayo.

“You know, it's not actually possible to blow up the harbor, itself,” Steve counters, but he's not making Danny move and he's unwrapping his sandwich, so Danny takes it as a win.

“Mines,” he counters. 

“You could degrade a channel or a landing site, but not the harbor itself,” Steve argues with his mouth full.

“We are talking Steve McGarrett, here, McGarrett. The harbor's only so deep.”

“Thirty-four to forty-four feet in the entrance channel.”

“Of course, you know that.”

“Except near the piers, most of Honolulu Harbor is at least forty feet deep.” 

“Depth charges!”

Steve shakes his head and finishes his sandwich in one massive bite.

Chin's ringtone blares from Steve's pocket. He fishes it out and hits speaker. Danny's already starting the car as Steve says something that might be “What 'ya got?”

“Duke just called. If we want Castillo without hunting for him, we need to get him on the way out with his lawyer.”

“On it.”

Steve is explaining the deployment of daisy-chained moored mines and how to bookend a target vessel for a spectacular boom when their asshole comes flouncing towards them. Danny has rarely felt such satisfaction as when they turn him right back around again. 

He lets Steve's “Book 'em, Danno,” slide, happy with the day, with Steve. But then he turns back to say something to him as they start up the steps on the way to processing, Castillo's lawyer bitching beside them, and Steve's gone.

***

He's grinding his teeth and sending his sixteenth text message to Steve's phone when Kono finally pings it successfully. Fucker turned his GPS off. He's moving down Pali Highway and then the H1. They watch the signal all the way into the parking lot and then Danny stalks back to his office and Kono goes to see if Chin's finished with Schaffer or if he needs help so that they can call it a day. 

Steve's stony-faced. He pauses in Danny's doorway to say, “It was Joe. I had to go.”

Danny closes his eyes and counts to five, not trusting Steve to still be there if he counts to ten. But Steve is still there, now facing him and frowning. 

“What, Danny. Just spit it out all ready.”

“Do not turn off your GPS,” Danny says and he swears he's trying to keep his volume from rising, but every word sounds louder and then he decides he just doesn't care. “We almost lost you four weeks ago, Steve,” he shouts. “Gone. I turned around downstairs and you were gone! Kono's canceling the BOLO, right now.” Which is a total lie, since they hadn't gone that far, yet, but Danny had been on the verge.

Glaring at him, Steve works his jaw. His hands are fists at his side, but all he says is, “It was Joe.”

Danny takes a deep breath and shuts his tone down. “Is Joe okay?”

“Yeah. He, um, he kidnapped Hiro Noshimori.”

All Danny hears is static. He closes his mouth. “He kidnapped... excuse me, you just said he kidnapped Noshimori?” He picks up his phone and looks at it. “Did you call me? I don't see any calls on here from you, Steven.” He pokes at the screen and then throws the phone at his fucking asshole excuse for a partner. 

Steve reaches out like the phone's a fucking baseball and easily plucks it from the air just before it can hit his chest, which makes Danny's anger flare in his own chest so hard it makes his head hurt.

“Where is he now.”

“I don't know.”

“Where did you meet him?”

Flattening his lips, Steve crosses his arms.

“Really, Steven? You're not going to tell me. Me, your partner, who went to North fucking Korea to haul your sorry butt back home. With Joe, might I add. Me, your partner, who fucked myself by staying here for you when you broke into the governor's mansion against my fucking advice and got framed for murder. Me, Steven, the one who helped you get your sister back and stood on the scene at your fucking house after fucking Hesse fucking murdered your father for fucking Wo Fat!”

Steve's eyes are hard, flat pits. He holds Danny's stare for a few seconds after Danny stops to breathe, but then has the grace to look down. There's movement in the hall. Chin and Kono are standing near the bull pen, both grim. Danny meets Chin's eyes. Even though he doesn't move, Chin nods and leans into Kono, turning them both away.

Obviously aware of them, Steve shifts slightly when they've gone, rolling his shoulders and swallows hard.

“He may have been your training officer, Steve, but I've put my time in on Wo Fat. Jenna's dead. You need to let me in on this.”

“Danny.”

Danny waits. Steve might be laconic, but a little while ago, he'd talked Danny's ears off about the setting of naval mines. He can surely manage more than just Danny's name.

“He's not just my training officer, Danny. He was my Dad's best friend. They were practically brothers. My Dad said, if anything happened, I could always trust Uncle Joe.”

“Uncle. Uncle Joe.” All the fight seeps out of him and Danny sits down, hearing Gracie yelling, 'Uncle Steve' in his head. Joe had said Steve was like a son to him, but- no wonder Steve's so hung up. “I knew he knew your Dad, but... Where did he have Noshimori, Steve. And why?”

Slumping back against the doorframe, Steve looks like Grace could take him out right now. “In the trunk of his car. Shelbourne's a person, Danny. Wo Fat's afraid of him. He wants Shelbourne dead.”

“What's Joe going to do with Noshimori?”

Steve shrugs. “He got his answers. Noshimori's the head of the Yakuza; Joe won't mess with that.”

“Joe's out of the military, Steve. He's going to go full-time on this, isn't he?”

“Yeah. I think so.” He tilts his head back and just looks back at Danny, his eyes softer, though he's still guarded.

“What do you need?”

He shakes his head and straightens, rubbing his face and then scuffing his hands back over his head. “Beer, maybe a run.” He crinkles his nose. “A fresh shirt.”

And Danny can go with that. It scares him how volatile he is around Steve, how deeply Steve affects him, how angry he can be in one second and how fiercely protective the next. Willing himself to indifference, he closes down all the windows he has open and shuts his computer down. He scans his desk, making sure what he's left out that the cleaning crew may see is non-vital. 

Steve hasn't moved, is back to leaning in the doorway, now with both arms and legs crossed, looking for all the world like he's already had three beers and has all night. 

He trades Danny his phone for the Camaro's keys and Danny fidgets while Steve checks his own office and locks up. He has something black on the back of his neck and Danny doesn't think, just reaches out and swipes at it. Steve jumps under his hand, but Danny just stills, pressing his fingers down a little harder and Steve arches his neck into his touch and then rolls his shoulders, groaning a little.

“Soot, from the van.” Danny says, drawing his fingers back as Steve turns to see. 

“God. Was that today?”

Danny laughs. “Yeah, babe. It's been a long one.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

The third time Steve prowls through the house in the dark, Danny sits up and growls at him. “If you come down here again, I'm gonna handcuff you to your bed.”

“You and what army?” Steve fires back, coming in from the kitchen. He doesn't stop, just slinks back upstairs, skipping the squeaky step.

Danny flops back down on the couch. After a long run that Danny refused to keep him company on, three beers, a burger, pasta, and salad, Danny thought Aquaman could forget the ocean calling him, but Steve had sat and stared at the water until Danny was amazed the ocean didn't come roaring up the beach and onto the lanai in response. He had finally paced down to the shoreline and disappeared, coming back soaked. 

But his calm didn't last long and he took the edginess he'd been nursing since dinner to bed around midnight. Danny had been dozing on the couch already, too tired to keep Steve occupied, his own mind relentlessly chewing on his options for where to live next, what would suit both his needs and Grace's, how much money he could really swing every month, how much he might need to loosen up for deposits. Just this past seven weeks with Steve had really helped. He'd been thinking how much Grace likes the Hilton, that there's lots to do there, maybe he could swing a deal with them to get him a couple more weeks breathing room, get through Christmas and Chin's wedding on New Year's Eve. 

The first time, Danny didn't wake until Steve hit the stairs back up. He'd shoved the headphones off his head, where they wedged themselves between his pillow and the arm of the couch, the sound of some guy selling watches just audible enough to soothe him. The second time, he heard him thump around upstairs and then trot down, slowing when he hit the landing. He tried to be quiet as he moved through the lower rooms, but Danny, feigning sleep, easily tracked his path and then heaved in a deep breath, yawned, and rolled over when Steve's bedroom door snicked shut again.

But he's wide awake, now, wondering what the hell McGarrett's problem is tonight. Wo Fat, his brain supplies. And yeah, okay. With Joe out there kidnapping Yakuza to interrogate them and no doubt planning to shake every quasi-governmental tree and every informant bush he can for information on anybody named, named for, or associated with the name 'Shelbourne', maybe Steve should be worried.

But Danny needs sleep goddamnit, and his cuffs are right here on the side table next to his head, with his badge and his service gun. And then the unbidden image of Steve stretched out on his bed, hands cuffed above his head rises like fog in his brain. 

Brain fog, like that guy Joe in Joe Versus The Volcano. And Steve's just like Meg Ryan, goofy and soft one minute, bristling like a puffer fish the next, and, Danny suspects, sexy as hell when aroused and wanting. Steve's mouth alone. Cuffed, unresisting, what could Danny not do with Steve's mouth alone? Add his long fingers, his wide palms... Danny groans and slides his own hand down to make himself more comfortable. 

His thoughts slide until he's dozing, one hand under his head, one laying heavy on his boxers, his fingers cupping his balls, having a conversation with Rachel while he's shaving. She's sitting on the tub behind him, and he'd love for her to sit there everyday, her long hair curling in waves over her shoulder and brushing over her belly. It was Grace in there, though they didn't know then who she'd become to them. 

Already in love with her, he had no idea how feral he would feel actually holding her in his arms. But even then, he was already Grace's. And he was Rachel's and Rachel's telling him the state of his cock- which is what she calls it and has ingrained in him- as he watches her in the mirror and shaves by feel alone, is called 'turgid' and he knows this, but he loves the way her lips pout out when she says it and he repeats it just so she'll say it again, and by the time she rises and presses herself against his back, so that he can feel the result of a past moment of 'turgidness', he's moved on to 'hard' and turns in her arms to kiss her.

Her mouth is warm and gentle, but as he deepens the kiss, starting to lose himself, his hands find short hair instead of long, and stubble under his palm and a hard chest against his own and he flushes hot, his skin burning, and his cock stiffens, throbbing, against his belly, almost painful... he jolts awake, panting. Palms his hard-on through his boxers, squeezing hard for some relief. He won't jerk off on Steve's couch. That's just, no. He's resisted the entire time he's lived here, waiting for showers and the occasional quickie in the bathroom and twice out on the lanai when Steve was gone, but not the couch. 

There's a slight thud upstairs, a strangled cry that Steve cuts in half. Danny softens as he waits, listening. Shadows from the wavering light of the TV surf the ceiling. Steve's quiet, though, which means he's awake, probably listening to hear if he's woke Danny. Danny's almost drifted off again when Steve finally moves. He cracks the door and comes out onto the overhang. 

Danny lets him steal down the stairs and into the dining room, into his Dad's study, before he eases up on one elbow and palms his cuffs. His hands are sweating, his heart thudding, and damnit. Now he wants Steve stretched out beneath him more than he wants sleep. And he did warn him. Steve pauses at the back of the house and Danny wonders if he'll go on out to the hammock or the beach. 

That would be good, because this is a really bad idea. Danny's already starting to harden again, even though he knows Steve's clueless when it comes to this dance of theirs. And Steve needs sleep, needs a steady hand, needs his best friend, not Danny suddenly making the first move before he deserts him to his night time terrors for Grace's sake.

Through half-closed lids, Danny sees Steve step out from the kitchen and Danny coils, anyway, telling himself to leave it, just leave it, even as Steve walks towards the stairs and he thinks he will- will just lay there with the cuffs hidden under the blanket and let Steve meander back upstairs, but Steve stops. He breathes out a low, startled laugh, and even as Danny's realizing Steve saw the cuffs were gone in the light of the TV, he's rolling up to his feet, and barreling into Steve mid-torso.

Steve goes down hard, head bouncing off the edge of the carpet onto the hardwood with a soft thunk. He brings his knee up between Danny's leg as he rolls, but Danny's ready for that, braces his leg and pushes back, still wrapped around Steve, trapping both his arms. Steve gets a hand up under Danny's shoulder and shoves him back, but Danny lets go as he does, going with the motion and Steve's only given him the leverage he needs to grab Steve's right arm at bicep and wrist, straighten his thigh, and shove Steve onto his side, slapping a cuff closed around his wrist. 

Steve is quivering with tension beneath him, shaking. Danny holds what he's got and lays his weight down on Steve, knowing he'll give rather than risk the progress he's made with his shoulders, especially the left one, which is bearing all their weight right now. There's something pressing into his belly and Danny wriggles, sussing out its shape. With a grunt, Steve kicks his legs around in front of him, trying to get enough leverage to flip Danny over. 

It's the fucking Sig. He's disappointed and pissed, which does wonders for flushing the last of his desire away. “Aw, give it up, already, Steve,” Danny snarls directly into his ear.

Steve goes lax beneath him, and Danny's stomach drops, thinking something's wrong. He drops his hand off Steve's bicep and lays his fingers on his neck. His pulse is fast, but strong. Steve rolls onto his belly with a sigh, his right arm folding easy against his back. Danny's left straddling Steve's hips as Steve goes limp, breathing hard. Still holding onto his wrist, Danny kneels up, pulls Steve's tee-shirt up and jerks the back holster and Sig off the folded waistband of Steve's sweats. Asshole's gone commando, too, tonight. Holster and all, he spins the gun off across the hardwood. It cracks against the base of the bookcase and stops. 

Steve turns his head down, pressing his forehead into the floor. 

“You got a headache, Steven?”

Steve gives a barely there nod and sighs again. 

“Give me your left hand.”

When he doesn't offer any protest, just holds his hand up to be cuffed, Danny frowns, but a smoky little twist of desire curls upward through his belly. He pushes the second cuff closed, leaving them both loose and then lowers himself so he's balanced lightly on Steve's lower back and reaches forward to stroke Steve's tense neck. Steve bows up into his touch, with a small noise of need. The smolder in Danny's belly catches and flames up. 

Steve's pliant in his hands, letting him work his neck and shoulders loose, turning his head so Danny can just make out his profile, his closed eyes, the quicksilver reactions to Danny's fingers crossing his face in the flickering light of the TV. He shifts with a slow roll of his hips as Danny strokes down his ribs. Scooting back, Danny works onto Steve's lower back, tracing the knobs of his spine and kneading out along the sharp bones of his hips. 

He's nearly panting again, restless under Danny's hands, trapped against the floor. Danny's own breath is catching again, and again, his hard-on riding the yield of Steve's sweatpants over the cleft of his ass. 

“Danny,” Steve pleads, a husk of breath. 

Danny pulls his hands away, pulls his leg over and pushes himself away.

“Danny, please.” It's scratchy and desperate and Danny tries hard not to think broken. “Please.”

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

Fumbling in his blankets, Danny finds his pants, finds the key, stumbles back over to Steve and unlocks the cuffs. Steve's hands fall to his sides, though he doesn't move right away. Danny drops the key there on the floor and tries to flee, but Steve grabs his ankle and holds on. 

He falls, not gracefully, and Steve's rolling over, reeling him in, saying, “Danny, Danny, stop, Danny, stop, it's okay” until he gets him wrapped up, his mouth on his neck, his cheek, his tongue marking his lips, his fingers hard and hot, still pulling him down, hugging him tighter, until Danny opens his mouth to him, not only lets him in, but takes back, and Steve is everything, everything, he wants right now. 

He can't breathe, for Steve grinding hard against him, rutting into his hip, and Danny needs to focus. This is too important. He rips his mouth away. Steve groans, attacks his collarbone instead. Danny gasps for air and shifts, Steve giving way without giving up his attack, until Danny's on top and presses down, cock to cock, the heat a shock despite their clothes. Steve throws his head back, thwacking it on the floor again and seriously, he's going to have bruises all over tomorrow. 

“Babe,” Danny whispers, stroking his head. Steve turns into the caress, kissing Danny's palm with an open mouth and Danny's hips jerk in response. He takes Steve's mouth again, and it's deep and wet and he could live there for a very long time, except, except... he needs...

“I need...” Steve says, an echo of Danny's thoughts.

“What do you need, babe?” And Danny knows, of course, he does, but he's never been sure Steve swings this way, that he's even aware of his own interest in Danny. Hell, Danny hardly swings this way anymore, hasn't for anyone else since years before Rachel. 

He tastes the skin of Steve's neck, at his shoulder. It's salty and a little bitter and Danny can't help biting down, just a bit. Steve arches up, both his hands move to Danny's ass and his fingers press in, holding him there as Steve rolls his hips in a slow, mind numbing rhythm that makes Danny's skin feel tight over his muscles. On his elbows, he's aware of every detail, the burn in his thighs, the stretch of his calves as he fights to keep his toes from sliding on the floor, the small ache in his left knee, the heat of Steve's hands, the sweat running down between his shoulders, the ever present sand beneath his palms when he places them flat on the hardwood and rocks his hips, tries to take control of the rhythm, slow it down, the whine rising from the back of Steve's throat, escaping through his parted lips with each breath he takes as Steve lets him.

Teetering on the edge, Steve gathering himself, tighter and tighter, Danny suddenly wants more than this, rubbing off against each other like teenagers. Or strangers. He sits up and takes Steve's hands in his, closing his thighs to block Steve's roll, hushing Steve when he starts to protest. Leaning over, he places them above Steve's head and holds them there. Steve stretches and then tightens his whole body, turning it into a long hard ridge beneath Danny before he relaxes completely, his pelvis sinking, belly cupping, in a way that slides Danny's cock hard up against Steve's again and makes Danny want even more than he's about to take. With effort, he pushes that desire away, banking them both, refusing to let his body move the way it wants when Steve goes still. 

“Stay,” he mutters and when he lets go, draws his hands back down to Steve's chest, Steve actually leaves his arms above his head, hands fisted. His pulse is jumping in his throat as he swallows, his gaze dark. The further rush of blood downward makes Danny lightheaded. His cock throbs with his heartbeat. He can feel Steve's heart, too, through his palm, beating its way forever into his own.

Easing back, Danny hooks his fingers in Steve's waistband and draws the top down far enough to free his thick cock, thankful that the night's so dark and close around them. The familiar, shifting light from the TV screen hides as much as it reveals. Steve jumps when Danny's fingers close on him and Danny lays his other hand flat on Steve's tight belly to keep him still. The tremble that spreads under his fingers nearly sends him over. He shudders and releases Steve briefly to press hard at the base of his own cock through his damp boxers, so that he can hold on a few minutes more. 

He wants the taste of Steve on his tongue, but he knows. He knows he's leaving and he thinks that just might keep him here, so he doesn't. The feel of him hot and stiff in his hand, it's enough. It has to be. He jacks Steve, hard and fast. 

Steve starts to reach for him, but when Danny growls a warning, he slams his arms back down again, hands just above his head, grimacing, eyes screwed shut, teeth clenched, and writhes until he figures it out, lets his pelvis rise under Danny as he presses against the floor with his fists and shoulders and feet; finally lets himself go and fucks up into Danny's closed fist. As he spills, body taut and straining, Danny lets go to cover him, runs his hands up Steve's rigid arms to his wrists and holds him down, licking into his open mouth until Steve drops under him, held breath rushing into Danny's mouth. He rolls his hips slowly, languidly, and offers his tongue; Danny sucks him in. 

His arms flex, testing, but he goes quiet again when Danny resists letting him go, holding hard enough to bruise. A rush of heat sears straight through Danny, tears a noise from his throat he's never heard before, and Steve responds, pushing up against him, abdomen rippling, and Danny bears down against that pressure, as Steve breathes something encouraging onto his lips before licking them, using his teeth. Danny tilts his face away. 

Steve bites his neck in revenge, and suckles, and it's too much, too much, Danny bucks against him, turns his head and buries his face in Steve's neck to get away from his mouth, but then Steve's breathing into his ear, “C'mon, Danny, god, you're making me...hard...again...fuck”. 

He jerks his left leg free from between Danny's knees and wraps it around Danny's thigh, slotting Danny's cock into the heated groove of his hip, holding Danny against him even as Danny fights it, renewing his grip on Steve's wrists. Finding the traction he needs, Danny can't hold out any longer. He thrusts helplessly into Steve's heat. The lethal friction-slick of his boxers and Steve's come brings him off in seconds.

It isn't until minutes later, after Danny registers that they are lying on their sides, legs tangled, Steve holding him tight, that he notices he's crying. “Shit,” he mumbles into Steve's neck, and draws in a long, shuddery breath. He's always liked the way Steve smells, but here in the hollow above his collar bone, he's damn addictive. 

“You okay,” Steve whispers into his hair.

“Yeah,” Danny says, swiping his cheeks as he sits up, grateful that Steve lets him go right away. 

Hitching his sweats up over himself, Steve rolls onto his back and scrubs at his face and hair; folds his long arms up under his head and watches Danny stand and pull off his shirt, and drop it, and then jerk off his boxers. Danny glances at him, but Steve's being careful to keep his face blank, though he doesn't hide the fact that he's looking. The boxers join his shirt and Danny crosses to the couch to pull his slacks on before he drops heavily onto it, elbows landing on his knees. 

He pushes his hair off his face with both hands and then leaves them there on his head, staring down at his bare feet. The ocean is loud, drowning out the sound of the TV still playing through his headphones. It can't be any later than three, maybe three-thirty. 

“I'm sorry, Danny,” Steve says, voice low. He sounds sorry. And sad.

Danny sighs and sits back, letting his hands rest on his thighs and his eyes rest on Steve's chest. He's so tired. “For what?”

“The gun.”

Good answer. He slides his gaze up, studies Steven's face. He's impassive, not looking away, but not really letting Danny catch his eyes, either. 

In that same, quiet tone, he says, “So. We doing this?”

“Are we...” And Danny has to stop, he's combusting so fast inside, but it doesn't help. “No, Steven,” he explodes, jumping up. “We are not, because I'm pretty certain I have more experience with men than you do, more than quickie handjobs and blowjobs at some club on leave, anyway. And despite this thing...” He waves his hands between them. “This thing between us, whatever it is, I work with you. I have to work with you everyday. I have to watch you run into dilapidated warehouses and drug shacks and disappear around corners when I know, I know there are other guys with guns trying to shoot you. So, no, McGarrett, we are so not-- and then...” there's Gracie, but he can't say that, can't witness the hurt in Steve's eyes if he says that. He stops to let his chest open up, takes a breath, because while he'd understood, he finally gets it right now, in this moment, what Rachel couldn't live with. “We are so not doing this.” 

Steve's face hardens, his lips pressing together into a that thin, straight line that Danny has begun to hate, but he just blinks up at him. 

He has no idea what he's asking for, Danny thinks. What Danny would give him, what he would want in return. None. Striding forward, Danny bends and scoops his clothes up. “I'm going to change.”

“You're doing this because of Rachel.”

Danny whirls around. “And Gracie. Damn straight. I'd much rather have your back in the field, make sure you live to eighty, than have you in my bed. It hurts enough already. I'm not going to regret that.”

He doesn't hear Steve leave, but when he comes back from showering and getting dressed, Steve's taken the truck and his stupid little gun and he's gone. Danny makes coffee and drinks it out on the lanai. He knows it'll be at least a couple of weeks before he's back here, before they can settle against each other again, drink beers and bump shoulders and get on with being more than friends and less than lovers. But they will, Danny has no doubt about that part of them, no matter how long it takes Steve to rebound from Wo Fat's torture of him, from Jenna's death, because Danny can't live without at least that part of them, knows it for certain now- not with the beat of Steve's heart still pounding in his chest and the salty bite of Steve's skin imprinted on his tongue.

He wanders back in and washes his mug, sets a fresh one out for Steve. In the living room, he straightens up and then takes the pillowcase off his pillow and stuffs it and his sheets and blanket into the washer and turns it on. Leaves the headphones in the guest room and packs his clothes and bathroom kit into the large duffle and garment bag he brought with him when he moved in. He takes them out to the Camaro and comes back in for his laptop and the leather case he's been hauling all his personal paperwork in since he came to Hawaii. At the very least, it forces him to purge often, and has taught him to only keep what's absolutely necessary.

He can't decide if he should leave Steve a note. 

He doesn't, but when he's sitting in the car, the engine running, he shoots him a text.

_Coming in late, about ten_

Seconds later, his phone beeps.

_c u then_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit more to this 'verse to be posted as timestamps. A couple done, a few still in my head :-/


End file.
